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DIVINE INSTITUTES

Translated with an introduction and notes by
ANTHONY BOWEN and PETER GARNSEY

LIVERPOOL

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

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The resurrected worship Jesus. Illuminated first page of Book 7 of a fifteenth-century
manuscript of Lactantius’ Divine Institutes , MS Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana
Plut.21.6 f. 158r, Florence.

Translated Texts for Historians

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Front cover: An emperor (Diocletian?) and his courtiers worship a pagan god, perhaps J upiter.
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Translated Texts for Historians
Volume 40

Lactantius

Divine Institutes

Translated with an introduction and notes by
ANTHONY BOWEN and PETER GARNSEY

Liverpool
U niversity
Press

First published 2003
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool, L69 7ZU

The right of A nthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey to be identified
as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and PatentsAct, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A British Library CIP Record is available.

ISBN 0-85323-988-6

Set in Times by
Koinonia, M anchester
Printed in the European U nion by
Bell and Bain Limited, Glasgow

Vir doctus, studio uerbis pietate refertus,
hoc opus instituitquod tibi, lector, habe.
sic cultus delere malos, firmare fideles,
omnibus ilium unum conciliare deum,
omnibus et uitam uoluit suadere beatam
quam bene per natum dat deus usque suum.
tarn bene uerborum Lactanti lacteus amnis
profluat atque animos irriget ipse pios.

A scholar's passion shaped in prose
set up this work: take it, and read.

By it he meant false gods to expose,
faith to grow strong, and all to heed
God's oneness and the life supreme
which through his son he kindly extols.
Flow forth, Lactantius' milky stream:
refresh all wisdom-seeking souls.

CONTENTS

Preface

Translator’s Preface

List of Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction

DIVINE INSTITUTES

Book 1 False Religion

Book 2 The Origin of Error

118

Book 3 FalseWisdom

168

Book 4 TrueWisdom and Religion

225

Book 5 J ustice

281

Book 6 TrueWorship

330

Book 7 TheLifeof Bliss

389

Select Bibliography

443

Index of Topics

453

Index of Proper Names

460

PREFACE

This book has its origins in some lectures that I gave soon after my arrival in
Cambridge in 1974, within the course in the hi story of political thought from
antiquity to the modern era. I was initially asked to deliver the lectures in
Greek Classical and Hellenistic thought, which M oses Finley (but not his
audiences) considered he had given long enough, in tandem with my former
colleague Richard Tuck, who was responsible (inter alia) for the period
from Cicero to Augustine. In due course I passed the Greeks on to more expert
practitioners than myself and took over the Romans and early Christians.
That slice of the course, as designed by Richard Tuck - to whom I here
acknowledge a longstanding intellectual debt- included lectureson Lactan-
tius' Divine Institutes.

I discovered early on that Lactantius has interested predominantly French,
German and Italian scholars, whose work is regrettably by and large unavail¬
able to our own undergraduates and those of other English-speaking
countries, and that in any case there was a need for a synthetic treatment of
Lactanti us and his D ivine Institutes, composed with the concerns of students
and scholars of intellectual history in mind. Eventually the present project
emerged, an annotated translation of the work in question, prefaced by a
discussion of Lactantius’ thought. Our collaboration has been thorough¬
going and has touched every aspect of the project. However, primary
responsibility for the introduction, the bulk of the annotation (together with
the bibliography and the Index of Topics) lies with me, and for the trans¬
lation (plus the textual and linguistic footnotes and the Index of Proper
Names) with Anthony Bowen; itseemed entirely appropriate that the Orator
of Cambridge University should take on the task of translating the most
significant work of the Professor of Latin Rhetoric at the capital city of the
emperor Diocletian. Two English translations already exist, but neither is
both accurate and up-to-date; our own offers in addition an explanation of
most of the numerous literary, philosophical, theological and historical
references in the text, and an interpretation of the content of the work as a
whole.

PREFACE

We have naturally leant on the work of other scholars, and are very
happy to acknowledgeourdebtto them, more especially to S. Brandt, whose
magnificent edition of the text appeared in 1890, and to P. M onat, whose
excellent annotated French translation together with Latin text thus far runs
to four of the seven books. Others whose work on Lactantius’ thought has
been of particular value to us include E. Fleck, V. Loi, 0. Nicholson, M .
Perrin, R. Pichon, M . Spanneut and A. Wlosok. A number of colleagues
have given us assistance at various stages: they include the members of
seminars that we convened on Books 1 and 5. M ore particularly, we are
extremely grateful to Timothy Barnes, Richard Finn, Caroline Flumfress,
Julia Kindt, Oliver Nicholson, Michael Reeve, Christopher Rowland,
M alcolm Schofield and David Sedley. Above all, we are deeply indebted to
M argaret Atkins, who read the whole work, saved us from many errors and
offered numerous improvements and insights. Finally, our thanks are due to
the B iblioteca M edicea Laurenziana, Firenze, for permitting us to reproduce
an illuminated capital and a page from their manuscript of Lactantius,
Biblioteca M edicea Laurenziana Plut.21.6.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

M anuscripts of Diuinae Institutiones are numerous, some are as early as the
fifth or sixth century, and problems of text are seldom very serious. The text
followed here is that of Samuel Brandt (Vienna, 1890) except where Pierre
M onat’stext in Sources Chretiennes is available (Paris, 1973-; so far Books
1, 2, 4 and 5 have appeared). Very occasionally Brandt’s text has been pre¬
ferred to M onat’s. Two principal M SS (R and S) preserve text in various
places throughout the work, some of it mere phrases but some of it whole
paragraphs, that is not in the main tradition. The majority of this extra text
contains passages that some have held to contain dualist thinking (see pp.
27-28 n. 106, however); most of the rest is directed at the emperor
Constantine, invoking him at the start of a book or glorifying his power.
T hese passages, relegated to the apparatus by B randt and pri nted i n ital ics by
M onat, we have included without distinction; the paragraph numbering
exposes the major passages.

Lactantius writes with an energy, wit and fullness reminiscent of Cicero
in theVerrines. Lactantius' imitation of the great master and model of oratory
is clear in vocabulary, syntax (see note on 5.17.30), sentence making,
rhetoric and rhythm. Ciceronian Latin, which he had practised all his life,
was clearly for him a comfortable and adequate idiom; so it would be for his
intended audience also. To turn it into English that is comfortable and
adequate itself is not a straightforward exercise. Sentence length and certain
figures of speech such as apostrophe and rhetorical questions present prob¬
lems well known to translators; this translation is literal (as it is called) only
if it also makes good English. Priority has gone to L actanti us' sense and
energy. A greater difficulty is presented by words such as sapiens and inno-
cens or by word clusters such as pius, impius, pietas, impietas and iustus,
iniustus, iustitia, iniuria. Virtus, here mostly translated 'virtue', is a particular
problem. Lactanti us was more of a moralist than a theologian, and the worth
of his arguments varies greatly, even within a paragraph, for he measured
worth more on a rhetorical than on an intellectual scale; he used his words
carefully but generously; he played no small partin developing the Christian

XII

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

vocabulary. On the whole, such words have been rendered with consistency;
but a total consistency is inimical to good English. Where Lactantius
appears to have the Christian God in mind, the word is capitalised. When he
uses deus so, he often gives it emphasis by putting it last in the sentence,
even at the cost of a Ciceronian rhythm.

Attribution of Lactantius' quotations is not always easy: he patently
quoted from memory, the plentifully stocked memory of a man well ac¬
quainted with the Bible, and at I east as thoroughly acquainted with Classical
authors, especially the Latin ones, as the best scholars of later ages have
been. M ostly he quotes verbatim; sometimes local need causes small varia¬
tions; sometimes he alludes in paraphrase. Where he is very close and the
original survives, and the quotation is part of the argument, the reference is
given in the text in square brackets; quotations that are ornamental are given
thei r reference i n a footnote. W here he is the only authority for the survivi ng
text, reference has been given to a modern collection of such fragments
where possible; so too, mostly, where he paraphrases or alludes; inverted
commas mark certain or probablequotation. Lactantius’ useof Greek is noted
by G preceding the use, and readers are reminded of this by a noteat its first
occasion in each book, in the Index of Proper Names, references are under¬
lined where text is quoted.

AJB

ABBREVIATIONS

AARC

Abel

AJP

BICS

Breysig

Charpin

Collatio

CSEL

Fontenrose

Garbarino

H SC P
Kern
JAC
J ECS
J RA
JRS
J ThS
LS

M arx

M aurenbrecher
NF Corp. Herm.

Atti del I' Accademia romanistica costantiniana
Abel, E., Orphica (Leipzig, 1885)

American J ournal of Philology
Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
Breysig, A., Germanici Caesaris Aratea cum scholiis
(Hildesheim, 1967)

Charpin, F., Lucilii Saturae 3 vols, Bude ed. (Paris,
1978-91)

M osaicarum et Romanarum Legum Collatio
Classical Quarterly

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
Fontenrose. J., Didyma: Apollo's Oracle, Cult and
Companions (Berkeley, 1988)

Garbarino, I., M . Tullii Ciceronis fragmenta ex libris
philosophicis, ex aliis libris deperditis, ex scriptis
incertis (M ondadori, 1984)

Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
Kern, 0., Orphica Fragmenta (Berlin, 1922)

J ahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum

J ournal of Early Christian Studies

J ournal of Roman Archaeology

J ournal of Roman Studies

Journal of Theological Studies

Long, A .A., and Sedley, D.N., The H ellenistic

Philosophers, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1987)

M arx, F., C. Lucilii Carminum Reliquiae, 2 vols
(Leipzig, 1904-05)

M aurenbrecher, B., C. Sallustii Crispi H istoriarum
Reliquiae (Leipzig, 1891-93)

Nock, A.D., and Festugiere, A. JCorpus Hermeticum
(Paris, 1946-54)

xiv

ABBREVIATIONS

Orac. Sib.

Peter

Geffcken,J., DieOracula Sibyllina (Leipzig, 1902)
Peter, H., Veterum historicum Romanorum reliquiae, 2
vols (Leipzig, 1870-1906)

Plasberg

Plasberg, 0., Academicorum Reliquiae cum Lucullo
(Stuttgart, 1922)

Ritter

Ritter, C., M. Fabii Quintiliani Declamationes quae
supersunt cxlv (Leipzig, 1884)

SDHI

Straume-

Zimmermann

Sources Chretiennes

Scripta et documenta historiae iuris

Symbolae Osloenses

Straume-Zimmerman, L., Broemser, F., and Gigon, 0.,
M , Tullius Cicero: Hortensius Lucullus Academici libri

SVF

(Darmstadt, 1990)

H .von A rnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, 3 vols
(Leipzig, 1903-05)

U sener

Vahlen

Vitelli

Usener, FI., Epicurea (Leipzig, 1887)

Vahlen, J., E nniae Poiesis Reliquiae (Leipzig, 1928)
Vitelli, C., M . Tullii Ciceronis Consolationis fragmenta
(M ondadori, 1979)

Vottero

Vottero, D., Lucio Anneo Seneca: 1 Frammenti

Warmington

(Bologna, 1998)

Warmington, E.H., Remains of Old Latin, 4 vols
(London, 1935-40)

Watt

Watt, W.S., M . Tullii Ciceronis Epistulae, vol. Ill
(Oxford, 1958, 1965)

Weyssenhof

Weyssenhof, C., Ciceronis epistularum fragmenta
(Warsaw, 1970)

YCS

Ziegler, leg.

Wiener Studien

Yale Classical Studies

Ziegler, K., M. Tullii Ciceronis De Legibus, 3rd edn
(Freiburg 1979)

Ziegler, rep.

Ziegler, K., Cicero: de republica, 6th edn (Leipzig,
1955)

INTRODUCTION

L LIFE, WORKS, REPUTATION

L. Caecilius Firmi anus Lactanti us is thought to have lived c. 250-c. 325. 1 Of
the little biographical information that we have, he himself releases some,
J erome (writing at the end of the fourth century) most of the rest. Lactanti us
was an African by birth. His city of origin is unknown. His instructor in
rhetoric, A rnobius, came from Sicca Veneria, a regional centre in the M ed-
jerda valley 100 or so miles south-west of Carthage. A rnobius was, like
Lactantius, a convert to Christianity, and himself wrote seven books of
Christian apologetic under the title Adversus Nationes (Against the Nations).
Lactanti us appears not to haveknown of thework when he composed Divine
Institutes. There was an obvious place to refer to it and its author in Divine
Institutes, namely, in Book 5 where three African apologists, Tertullian,
M inucius Felix and Cyprian, are critically assessed. 2 Perhaps the two works
were written more or less at the same time, and in places far apart. 3

Lactantius made a reputation for himself teaching rhetoric in North
Africa as his teacher had done. We do not know where, though it is hard not
to believe, in view of his future career, that he was based in Carthage,
provincial capital and centre of learning. Lactantius was always a teacher.
As he says in an autobiographical aside: 'I have made efforts myself to
achieve what little ski 111 could in speaking because of my career in teaching,
buti have never been eloquent, becausel neverwentinto public life' (quippe
qui forum ne attigerim quidem 4 ). He is saying that he never became a career-

1 L’s name is contested, as between Caelius and Caecilius. I follow Schanz-Hosius (1922),
414. A good brief introduction to Lactantius in English is lacking. See Wlosok (1993; French,
translated from the German); Barnes (1981), 11-145, 291-92 nn. 96-99, is to be preferred on
chronological matters. See Bryce (1999) for a full bibliographical catalogue of secondary
literature on Lactantius. A shortlist of the more substantial works might include Pichon (1901),
Wlosok (1960), Loi (1970), Fontaine and Perrin (1978), Perrin (1981), M onat (1982), Digeser
(2000). Oliver Nicholson has made a singular contribution in a number of articles.

2 D.l. 5.1.21-28; 5.4.3-8.

3 D.l. belongs to 303-10. Simmons (1995), preface, dates Adv. nat. to 302-05, probably
correctly.

4 3.13.12.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

lawyer (though he inevitably taught forensic rhetoric); he was neither an
advocate nor a jurist. He presumably produced a great many of both,
particularly advocates, who always far outnumbered jurists. Advocacy was
an established entree into a career in administration and government.
Lactantius may perhaps be seen as an African equivalent of Libanius of
Antioch, peppering provincial governors with letters of recommendation for
pupils seeking a job on their staff, typically as assessors in their courts. We
have Libanius’ correspondence but not Lactantius’, so this is guesswork, but
reasonable guesswork nonetheless. Lactantius after all was appointed to an
official chair in Latin rhetoric in Nicomedia, Bithynia, the seat of the
emperor Diocletian. 5 So he must have been, if not the best in the world at his
profession, at least very well known and very well connected - someone
with a network of people, especially ex-pupils and proteges, reaching into
powerful places. 6

Lactantius moved from North Africa to north-west A si a M i nor to take up
his post towards the end of the third century. The timing was unfortunate.
The Great Persecution, launched in 303, was brewing when he arrived at
court, and he was already a Christian. He encountered among others two
zealous pagans, both unnamed, onea philosopher, the other a judge, who he
says played leading roles in provoking the persecution. 7 The philosopher is
sometimes, probably incorrectly, identified with Porphyry the Neoplatonic
philosopher, well-known as a critic of Christianity. The identification of the
judge with Sossianus Hierocles, governor of Bithynia in 303, is secure.
Lactantius says that the philosopher was the author of three books Against
Religion and the Christian Name, but he passes over any substantive
criticisms of Christianity that they might have contained. We are treated
rather to a destruction of his character and a scathing description of the bad
reception that he received. Porphyry was notorious as a serious and effective
critic of Christianity rather than as a moral reprobate. In contrast, a hostile
airing is given to the judge’s main criticisms: of Christianity, that its
scriptures are full of contradictions, and of Christ, that he was a man who
arrogantly claimed divine status and was outclassed as a miracle worker by
Apollonius of Tyana. Lactantius refers to a tract called Lover of Truth which
contained these criticisms. A work of that title is associated with Hierocles

5 5.2: ego cum in Bithynia oratorias litteras accitus docerem. According to Jerome, Vir. III.
80, hewas 'summoned with the grammarian Fabius’.

6 See Nicholson (2001a), 184.

7 5.2-4.1. See Barnes (1976); (1981), 164-67, 174-78; (1994). Barnes argues against
Porphyry, convincingly in my view. On the other side, see Digeser (1998; 2000).

INTRODUCTION

by a Eusebius (not Eusebius of Caesarea), 8 who answered him back in his
Against Hierocles, just before the launching of the Great Persecution.
Lactantius indicates that he was provoked into writing Divine Institutes by
these men in particular, and by the Great Persecution in general. 9

This was not his first work. It was preceded by a Symposium, an
Itinerary of his journey from Africa to Bithynia composed in hexameters, a
G rammarian, all lost, and the surviving On the Workmanship of God (De
Opificio Dei), composed c. 303. We also have an (undatable) poem on the
phoenix (De ave phoenice), which is presented as a symbol of the Christian
who has achieved salvation. Other lost works, two books to Asclepiades,
eight books of letters, four to Probus, two to Severus and two to a pupil
Demetrianus, are not necessarily earlier than Divine Institutes. 10

Lactantius' next movements, and his later literary works, are also not
precisely dated. He probably left Nicomedia in about 305, passing to the
West, perhaps to Italy, and was later employed by Constantine as tutor for
his son Crispus in Trier, perhaps as early as 310. 11 To these years or later
belong the introduction of minor changes in Divine Institutes - including
invocations of Constantine - the composition of the triumphalist On the
Deaths of the Persecutors (c. 313-15), followed by On Anger (c. 316), and
the Epitome of the Divine Institutes (320 or later). He intended to write, but
apparently never did, works against heretics and J ews. 12 During his extended
stay at the court of Constantine, he was in theory in a position to make an
impact on the emperor and his legislation. Whether he tried to exert
influence, and how far it carried, is a matter for speculation. 13

8 Hagg (1992).

9 For Lactantius as source for the history of the period, including the Great Persecution,
historians normally turn, with justification, to his later work D e M ortibus Persecutorum (0 n the
Deaths of the Persecutors). On the Great Persecution, the content of the edicts and their
consequences, see De Ste Croix (1954); also Barnes (1998), 274ff.

10 Perrin (1974), 11-17.

11 Barnes (1981), 13, and pers. comm., believes that Lactantius spent 305-08 somewhere in
the West, perhaps in Africa. Italy appears more likely.

12 4.30.4; 7.1.26.

13 Amarelli (1978) thinks his influence was significant; others, e.g. Rouge (1983), 116, are
more sceptical. Evans Grubbs (1995) argues persuasively for the limited impact of Christian
thinking on Constantine's legislation as a whole (a conclusion that has implications for
Lactantius), but thinks Constantine's Oration to the Assembly of the Saints, delivered at Easter,
probably in 325 (cf. Barnes 2001a), does reflect Lactantius' influence (p. 35). For a recent
contribution to the debate, with special reference to the matter of religious toleration, see
Digeser (2000), 134-43.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Lactantius wasfamousin hisown day and subsequently in late antiquity,
not to mention the Renaissance, 14 as a teacher of rhetoric and for his own
eloquence. As already noted, he attracted the attention, and was put on the
payroll, of two emperors, Diocletian and Constantine. Jerome called him
'the most eloquent man of his time’, and referred to the 'stream of Cicer¬
onian eloquence’; his treatises were a kind of epitome of Cicero. 15 This
remark could be read as something of a backhanded compliment, both
because of 'epitome', and because J erome, notoriously, had nightmares over
whether his own exposure to Cicero in the past was preventing his being a
good Christian in the present, and would be held against him at the Last
J udgement in the future. 16 However, Jerome does also express admiration
for the use to which Lactantius put his eloquence, and this is interesting, as
involving an evaluation of Divine Institutes. In a letter to Paulinusof Nola he
says he demolished his opponents with ease (facile aliena destruxit) and
wrote very forcefully against the pagans (contra gentes scripsit fortissime). 17

Up to this point J erome was saying exactly what Lactantius would have
wanted him to say. He knew his own strengths, and they lay in the ability to
argue a persuasive case after the manner of the orators of old, above all
Cicero. Lactantius set out to be an effective advocate for his new-found
religion, superior to any of his predecessors. J erome, however, in the same
letter to Paulinus of Nola, mixes praise with criticism: 'Would that he had
been as good at affirming our doctrines as he was at demolishing those of
others’ (utinamtam nostra adfirmarepotuissetquamfacilealiena destruxit).
W hat is to be made of this? I sj erome attacking his qualities as a theologian? 18
The context is significant. Jerome is finding fault with a whole string of
Christian writers who wrote in Latin. Lactantius is one of them; the others
are T ertul I ian, Cyprian, Victorinus, A rnobius and H ilary. Those are just about
all the major players except Ambrose, who, unlike those on the list, was still
alive. 19 Jerome’s critique embraces both style and content. His remarks

14 See e.g. Panizza (1978). There are more than 150 manuscripts of Divine Institutes,
mostly dating from the Renaissance. Pico de la M irandola proclaimed him Cicero Christianus.
See his De studio divinae atque humanae philosophiae (Basel, 1573), ch. 7.

15 Jerome, Chron. Ad 317 p.Chr. (p. 230 Helm): vir omnium suo temporeeloquentissimus;
Ep. 58.10: quasi flumen eloquentiaeTullianae.

16 Jerome, Ep. 22.30.

17 Jerome, Ep. 58.10.

18 Jerome did find him lacking on the Trinity, see n. 23, below, but that is not at issue here.

19 In Ep. 60.10, Jerome lists as the source of quotations for the benefit of the learned
Nepotianus, the following: Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, M inucius Felix, Victorinus
and A rnobius.

INTRODUCTION

about Cyprian and Lactantius run roughly along the same lines: Cyprian
'failed to expound the divine scriptures’ (scripturas divinas nequaquam
disseruit), Lactantius 'to affirm our doctrines' (nostra adfirmare). It may be
that these barbed comments are to be read in the light of what was happening
betweenJeromeandAugustine.Thetwo men werecompeting for the atten¬
tion of Paulinus, and the matter was argued, at least in part, over the use of
pagan writings to preach the Gospel. This is the view of J ean Doignon, who
thinks that Augustine was replying to J erome in his De doctrina Christiana
(On Christian Doctrine) published two years later. 20 Augustine there names
'good men of the faith' who were refugees from Egypt, that is, paganism,
and who put their experience with pagan letters to good usein preaching the
Gospel. They are Cyprian, Lactantius, Victorinus, Optatusand Hilary.

The competition over Paulinus, if that is what it was, can only be part of
the picture here. Lactantius’ work was a forerunner of Augustine's much
more ambitious counterblast to paganism in De civitate dei (City of God,
composed c. 412-26). Augustine’s implicit backing in On Christian Doctrine
of Lactantius’ project foreshadows at least a partial endorsement in City of
God of his approach to pagan authorities, notably the use of the Sibyl as
cited in Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue and read by Augustine as prophesying the
coming of Christ and his salvific role. 21 J erome complained to Paulinus
about the way some people flitted freely between sacred and profane
writings and used Vergil as an interpreter of Scripture. 22

Jerome's caveat about the way Lactantius (and others) expounded the
Gospel should not therefore be read as a general attack on his (and their)
deficiencies in the realm of theology. 23 In any case, modern criticisms of
Lactantius are rather more serious. He has earned credit for preserving
earlier literary material which we would not otherwise have from sources
such as Cicero, Seneca, Ennius and the Corpus Hermeticum, and for
structuring it in a reasonably intelligible way. But his work has been branded
as essentially derivative and second-hand. 24 This assessment has been

20 Doignon (1963), on Augustine, Doctr. C hr. 2.40.60-61 (of 397).

21 Civ. 10.27; 18.23.

22 Jerome, Ep. 53.7.

23 In any case, Lactantius was writing a textbook, not a learned treatise. Misalleged dualistic
tendencies are to my mind heavily overplayed. See, briefly, Quasten (1950, repr. 1992), 406-
07; in detail, Heck (1972), and n. 106, below. Jerome's charge that he denied the concept of the
Trinity (especially in his lost Letters of Demetrius) carries little weight in view of the fact that
the concept had yet to be developed. See Jerome, Ep. 84.7; Comm, in Gal. ad 4.6.

24 See e.g. Pichon (1901); Loi (1970). Both judge him to be a 'mediocrity'.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

promoted by scholars with a dominant interest in the Classical sources of
Lactantius and rather less concern for the quality of his argument. The first
of the source-hunters was Brandt, who more than a century ago system¬
atically mined The Workmanship of God for its literary ancestors. Pichon
took up the subject of Lactantius' sources and treated it in some detail,
though as a part of a much larger project. Works of Q uelIenforschung by de
Labriolleand Hagendahl surveyed the whoiefield of early Christian writing.
Perrin in his two-volume work on The Workmanship of God gave a lot of
space to the discussion of possible literary relationships and parallels. The
culmination of this approach wasOgilvie's project, which set out to identify
the literature on which Lactantius drew, both his working library, and the
books that he knew well enough to quote from memory. 25 Ogilvie managed
to do this without any explicit evaluation of Lactantius, but the assumption
permeating his book is that Lactantius’ work was largely derivative. The
conclusion, that Lactantius had read very little first-hand apartfrom Cicero
and Vergil, is bound to affect one's view of him. That A ugustine might have
read no more, or even less, especially on the Greek side, is noted by Ogilvie
at the end of his book, but nothing is made of the observation. 26

The charge that Lactantius is not much more than his sources does not
stand up to close scrutiny. A fairer and more accurate evaluation wouldfocus
on the effectiveness with which he argues the cause of Christianity against
paganism before a putative audience of the educated classes of the Roman
empire. 27 Such a project of rehabilitation cannot skirt the question of the
influence of earlier and current literature and ideas, but it would demonstrate
that Lactantius made creative use of such material; moreover, that his
rhetorical strategy fashioned a kind of Christian apologetic that had never
been seen before. Finally, a proper assessment of Lactantius would highlight
his singular achievement in constructing a coherent body of Christian ethical
thinking, against the background of and in critical dialogue with classical
thought. We can at least initiate such a project now. 28

25 Brandt (1891), Pichon (1901), de Labriolle (1924), Hagendahl (1958), Perrin (1974),
Ogilvie (1978).

26 B ryce (1990) has the same title as Ogilvie's book, but is a constructive attempt to explore
Lactantius’ involvement with pagan writers, especially Cicero and Vergil. See Heck (1988) on
Lactantius’ use of the classics in general. Heck (1980) is a telling critique of Ogilvie.

27 The decline of Lactantius’ stature since the Renaissance probably reflects the way the
reputation of rhetoric has plummeted. See Crook (1995) for a timely defence of rhetoric. Lac¬
tantius in any case needs to be judged by the quality of his arguments as well as for his rhetoric.

28 See Roots (1987), and more fully (1988), for a parallel project based on The Workman¬
ship of God, with an emphasis, however, on Lactantius’ talents as a rhetorician.

INTRODUCTION

Z DIVINE INSTITUTES: CONTENTS, GENRE, AUTHORITIES
C ontents

The work begins with a pair of books attacking the pagan gods, De falsa
religione (On false religion) and De Origine Erroris (The origin of error).
L actanti us contrives a consensus behi nd the propositi on that G od i s one. T he
many 'gods’ are no more than promoted men; indeed they represent debased
humanity, to judge from their behaviour. M oreover, they are relatively new
arrivals on the scene. L actanti us then (in Book 2) turns his attention to man,
and the history of his worship of false gods. He explains how man, forgoing
his special status in creation as the only creature which stands erect and
faces the heavens, came to worship images and to persevere in this, even
when it was obvious (and admitted) that it was stupid to do so. A second pair
of books, Defalsa sapientia (False wisdom) and Devera sapientia et religione
(True wisdom and religion), are aimed at dethroning philosophers as self-
appointed wise men, and at annexing wisdom for the Christian religion.
Lactantius first turns the philosophers’ own arguments against them, then
confronts them with Christian weaponry, in the shape of the story of the life
and death of Christ as foretold by the prophets. The fifth and sixth books, De
iustitia (Justice) and De vero cultu (True worship), define the virtues,
especially justice, and lay down the precepts for a Christian life. The seventh
and final book De beata vita (The life of bliss) sets out his eschatology and
the rewards that await those who follow the path of justice and virtue.

Book 1

Lactantius’ mission is to free men from pagan religion and philosophy, and
to point the way to the truth, which lies in Christianity. Christianity is the
only religion to unite sapientia and religio. Educated men (docti), those who
respect and seek wisdom, must be pointed towards the true wisdom. In
following the philosophers they were on the wrong track. The philosophers
might have believed that they were teaching how to live well (and the aim at
least can be endorsed, making philosophy a more worthy profession than
rhetoric), but they were hopelessly divided among themselves, and in any
case did not possess the true religion, without which true wisdom is un¬
attainable. The fundamental factisthat sapientia and religio are inseparable,
and neither can be true independently of the other.

God is, and can only be, one. This is shown, in the first place, by the com¬
mon belief in providence, backed up by reason and the evidence of poets,

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

philosophers and oracles. The pagan gods, notably Hercules, Aesculapius
and the benefactor-gods, J upiter and Saturn, are not worthy of the name. I n
any case, as can be seen from the work of Euhemerus mediated through the
translation of Ennius, J upiter and Saturn (and the rest) were not gods, but
men who were accorded divine status. The presence of women in the Pan¬
theon (among other things) confirms that the so-called gods were promoted
men. The Stoic allegorical interpretation of myths is to be rejected. The
stupidities, barbarities and scandals connected with the gods and their cults
are endless and despicable. Far from theChristian religion being new, itisthe
pagan gods who are arrivistes. Saturn was born only about 1800 years ago.

Book 2

What are the sources of religious error? Why did people think men were
gods, and why did they persist in cult worship, even when like Cicero they
could see the fol ly of it? The first part of the answer is ignorance, which isa
property of the educated and the wise as much as of the masses. Human
wisdom does not in itself enable us to perceive and embrace true religion:
this is something which has to be taught. But it is a blind faith in ancestral
tradition that above all maintains the cult of the gods. And who are the
ancestors? Why, in the first place, Romulus’ pack of primitive shepherds,
from which he fashioned the first senate of Rome. We should not, however,
like sheep follow old ideas, but instead use our brains and aim at wisdom,
which is the realisation that God is one and the maker of all things. God
created the world (according to the principle of opposing elements), and
men and animals to live in it. M an was not made by Prometheus, nor did he
spring from the earth, nor was he always there. M an’s Fall issued in a world
full of wickedness and crime, orchestrated by the fallen angels-turned-
demons under their devilish leader. Oracles, astrology, augury, necromancy
and magic are inventions of these bogus divinities, who usurp the worship of
the true God. Their images, which are the object of cult, are impotent,
mortal, man-made. It is sacrilege to worship them, but also an insult to our
human reason and stature.

Book 3

Both religion and wisdom are necessary, and both are missed by the philo¬
sophers. The word philosophy gives the game away: it means pursuit of
wisdom, so it can't be wisdom. Philosophy is in fact opinion, not wisdom,

INTRODUCTION

which is the property of God, not man. And there are as many opinions as
there are philosophers. Socrates saw that nothing can be known - and the
Academic Sceptics followed in his tracks - but in holding this view he was
denying philosophy a raison d’etre.

Of the three branches of philosophy, natural philosophy deals with matters
beyond our grasp, while logic is to do with form, not substance. Ethics is
concerned with how to live well, and thus must be primary. Yet moral
philosophers have missed the end of man, the highest good. Whatever it is, it
must be peculiar to man (and attainable by all men, not just a tiny elite),
involve the soul rather than the body, and be grounded in knowledge and
virtue. It is, in fact, immortality, the reward for the practice of true religion,
that is, the recognition of God as father and the pious worship of him.

Philosophers were wrong both in thinking of this life as a great good,
and in trusting in their capacity to teach happiness or achieve it. This is borne
out by their behaviour - they do not practise what they preach - and by their
false or scandalous ideas. Plato thought that equity, a central element in
justice, could be achieved by the denial of private property and the family,
the Stoics regarded pity as somewhere between a vice and a disease, and
Cicero blamed evil on luck rather than on the devil. Philosophers have either
stood by afalsereligion (likeSocrates), orruled religion out (likeEpicurus).
In so doing they have cut themselves off from true wisdom, which is
knowing God and worshipping him.

Book 4

Wisdom and religion are inseparable; they come together only when theone
God is worshipped. The worship of more than one god is against nature; it is
also against reason, as is demonstrated by the unity of father and master in
the paterfamilias according to the rules of the civil law. The authority of the
prophets establishes the reality and truth of God and his works, in the first
place the Son of God; he was born twice, once in the spirit (without a
mother), once in the flesh (without a father). Prophetic authority and the
mission of Christ are to be understood as part of a comprehensive under¬
standing of the history of the world.

Christ was sent to earth in response to evil, the worship of false gods, and
the desertion of God and his prophets by thejews. Hecameto announce to
all men that God is one, and to teach justice. Christ is the embodiment of both
virtue and justice. He could have come in power and glory. This, however,
would have been a denial of man's liberty, and would not have shown man

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

that he could overcome sin. A good teacher will not convince unless he
confirms his words with deeds. Where philosophers failed, Christ (alone)
succeeded. Christ had to suffer, and to die the most degrading death, in order
to teach man to endure pain and despise death; that is the way to virtue,
perfect and complete.

How could God and Christ be one? A father cannot be called a father
withouta son, and vice versa. God and Christ are one just as father and son
are one in civil law: the father controls the son; he may grant the son the
name and power of master; in the law, however, there is only one house and
one master.

Book 5

Christianity is under attack and has not been properly defended. The
solution is to link justice to religion, and the correct strategy for winning
over educated pagans and wavering Christians is to approach the Christian
truth by way of the non-Christian authorities rather than Scripture.

J ustice prevailed in the Golden Age. People lived in peace and harmony
and worshipped the one true God. Jupiter’s arrival wrecked this ideal
society. J ustice was put to flight, true religion was abandoned and cupiditas
and the institutions to back it were installed. J ustice returned to earth with
the Incarnation, but only a few possess it; it goes unrecognised by the many,
and is persecuted by the judicial authorities.

Why was justice not accepted when it was restored? God retained evil so
that virtue could be identified and diversity kept, the essential condition for
the existence and development of the mystery of the divine religion.

How arethejustto be recognised? By theirfruits. Polytheism goes with
injustice, unholiness and persecution of the just, whereas the worship of the
true God is the mark of the just - and virtuous.

What is justice? Justice embraces all the virtues, but especially pietas
and aequitas. If you do not worship God you do not know justice. Greeks
and Romans fail the test. Their practice of social inequality shows that they
lack justice.

Why are the just thought foolish and why are they in fact wise?
Carneades distinguished civil and natural justice: the former is wise but not
just, the latter just but not wise. However, a just man escapes the situations
imagined by Carneades, in which a choice has to be made between oneself
and others often in a serious crisis, because he is not profit-seeking, but
rather sociable and generous and knows the difference between good and

INTRODUCTION

evil. If he is caught up in such situations, he will be prepared to go without,
or to die.

Why are so few just, and why do the unjust prosper? Human existence is
spiritual not material, and its true goods are invisible and lasting. Some
virtues (patientia, innocentia) can be exercised only in adversity. God’s
present priority isto test and discipline thefaithful. Persecution adds to their
numbers. God will judge and punish the unjust. In a digression Lactantius
pleads for freedom of religious belief and practice, for the use of argument
rather than force.

Book 6

Our duty (officium) is to worship God. True worship involves the mind and
spirit, not earthbound objects, it issues from those on the path of virtue
rather than of vice, aiming at heaven rather than hell. Virtue is not know¬
ledge of good and evil, but doing good and not doing evil, it is necessarily
preceded by knowledge, which is knowledge of God. First we must give
God his due, then man (but this too is for God, as man is made in the likeness
of God). These are the two officia of justice, which is the mother and head of
the virtues. The second officium boils down to pity and humanity. U nlike
those who follow the cults of the gods, who in giving invariably look for
return, the just necessarily help those who are helpless and incapable of
giving anything back. The Stoics were way off course in treating pity as a
vice when it is man’s distinctive virtue.

I n general, the passions or emotions are not to be eradicated (Stoics) or
merely controlled (Peripatetics), but directed on to the true path. They are
not in themselves evil, but rather vicious if exercised badly and virtuous if
exercised well. Even cupidity, lust and anger (the 'three Furies') have desir¬
able ends, God having set bounds to them. Two key virtues are innocence
and patience, which teach us not to cause injury, nor to seek redress for
injury (pace Cicero), but to bear injury (and worse). The pleasures of the
senses need to be recalled to their proper function. Ocular pleasure, such as
experienced by spectators at the games, is polluting, especially when killing
is part of the spectacle; but all killing is criminal, including soldiering,
prosecuting for a capital penalty and exposure of children. The pleasure of
touch, which amounts to lust, serves God’s design to propagate the species
and to enable the virtue of continence to emerge, but it too readily becomes
a tool of the devil. In the matter of sexual behaviour, divine law rises above
human law, in for example enjoining chastity on both husbands and wives

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

and in condemning homosexuality. In sum, the proper sacrifice for God isa
life of justice, patience, faith, innocence, chastity and abstinence. This is the
true religion.

Book 7

Worshipping the true God through thick and thin would have no point were
it notforthe promised reward of perpetual bliss. To grasp the reality of this,
one must understand why the world, and man, were made, and the timing of
the end. The philosophers understood none of these things because they
relied on human wisdom. They did make contact with the truth, but could
notseethewholepicture, and wereunableto mount a proper defence (e.g. in
the face of Epicurean arguments against the immortality of the soul). Things
were made for a purpose, there was a plan: the world was made for man
(who alone has a divine element in him, and the capacity for virtue), and
man was made for God (to worship him and honour him as father).

Why did God set up good and evil? Man is shaped out of opposed
elements; he had to be offered both good to useand evil to shun. Virtuecould
not exist without vice: without an enemy there would be no victory. M an has
two lives, one temporary and assigned to the body, the other eternal and
related to the soul. We receive immortality in our second life as a reward for
our labours in the first.

The end will come 6000 years after the beginning, which means rather
soon - in 200 years at most. The destiny of Rome holds the key; by control¬
ling the world Rome is putting off the end, which will be catastrophic.
Society and morality will fall apart, justice will be put to flight. Christ will
come again, however, to reign in the Holy City in justice and peace for 1000
years. At the end of the millennium, the release of the devil and his mustering
of the nations and siege of the Holy City will usher in the final showdown,
when God will conquer evil and transform theworld and man. Atthe same
time, the dead will be resurrected and God will decide the eternal fate of all
mankind in the Last J udgement. Therefore, adopt the true religion with wisdom,
opt for justice, fight for God and against evil, and win the prize for virtue!

Genre

This is Christian apologetic. It belongs in a succession of such works. On the
Greek side, the line runs from Aristides through M elito, A thenagoras, J ustin,
Tatian and Theophilus, to Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and on the

INTRODUCTION

Latin side, from TertulMan, M inucius Felix and Cyprian to Arnobius and
Lactantius. Lactantius mentions only the first three Latins. He makes most
use of the Octavius of M inucius Felix. 29 A prime source of ammunition for
his attack on pagan gods, however, is Cicero, 0 n the nature of the gods (De
natura deorum). Books 1 and 2 of Lactantius follow the first two books of
Cicero’s work. 30 M inucius Felix had used this work too, as a model of style,
form and argument. There is a remark of Arnobius to the effect that zealous
pagans thought that Cicero's treatise should be burned, because of the
effective use that Christians were making of it. 31

Christian apologetic is an umbrella term, covering a wide variety of
examples. Divine Institutes is quite unlike any of its predecessors, though
there is, unsurprisingly, some overlap in material, notably in the attacks on
the pagan gods. The work is nothing I ess than the first attempt at a summary
of Christian thought. The title is revealing: it evokes a manual of Roman law.
The parallel with Roman law comes to the surface early in the first book. 32
H ere L actanti us clai ms that although he has abandoned the education of advo¬
cates, all that pleading of imaginary cases was not without its uses for him,

29 See Pellegrino (1947). There is only one explicit quotation from M inucius Felix, but
many borrowings and allusions. On Christian (and other) apologetics there is now Edwards
(1999); see, however, the comments of Barnes (2001).

30 See Roots (1988), where in addition it is argued that Book 3 is to be aligned with the
Academics, Book 5 with Republic, especially Book 3, Book 6 with On Duties, and Book 7 with
the lost Consolation. The argument is plausible, and further confirms the already transparent
special relationship between Cicero and Lactantius.

31 Adv. nat. 3.7: haec scripta quibus Christiana religio comprobetur. That the text of Cicero
was deliberately manipulated and misinterpreted by Christian apologists needs no stress. See
e.g. 1.17.4, where Book 3 of Cicero, N.D. (On the Nature of the Gods) is read as completely
overturning Roman religion, rather than as a demonstration that Greek philosophy is not
adequate to explain it.

32 1.1.8-12. There were Institutes, i.e. handbooks, of rhetoric too, most famously the Insti¬
tute Oratoria of Quintilian (c. 40-c. 96). Lactantius had Institutes of civil law in his sights,
however - for example, those of the Classical jurists M arcianus, Florentinus, Ulpian and Paul.
In the 6th century there appeared not onlyJ ustinian’s Institutes (of 533), produced by a small
committee headed by the quaestor Triboni an and a part of J ustinian’s grand project to codify the
civil law; but also Cassiodorus’ Institutes (c. 562), of which the first book is known in some
manuscripts as Institutiones D ivinarum Litterarum (with variants), and the second as Institu-
tiones saecularium litterarum (with variants). This work in its name and purpose evokes
Lactantius, of whom, however, Cassiodorus betrays no awareness. A more direct source is
likely to have been Instituta Regularia Divinae Legis by Junillus, composed c. 542 by the
successor to Triboni an as quaestor; this work is specifically recommended in Cassiodorus, Inst.
1.10.1, and was evidently promoted by him. I am indebted for this information to Mynors
(1937), O'Donnell (1979), and CarolineHumfress(per litt.).

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

for it has equipped him to be an effective defence attorney for Christianity.
Heisin no doubt that a discourse that carries the bright sheen of rhetoric will
make the greater i mpact on men’s minds. T he cause was i ncomparably more
important. If lawyers can givethegrand name of Institutionescivilis iuristo
works designed to settle petty disputes between citizens 'over gutters or
water-theft or common affray', how much better shall webe doing in compo¬
sing Institutiones divinae about 'hope and life, salvation and immortality,
and God, for the eternal settlement of superstition and error... ?' 33 He offers
further explanation in the context of a critique of his Latin predecessors in
Book 5. 34 Among their inadequacies he counts the fact that their works were
little more than broadsides against paganism. He is setting up (instituere)
something new, making a positive and comprehensive statement about doctrine
(doctrinae totius substantia): the nature of god and man, the beginning and
end of the world, the life and mission of Christ, and Christian ethics. It
would not be outlandish to see Divine Institutes as a forerunner of City of
G od, a (deservedly) more familiar work of Christian apologetic which doubles
up as a summa theologiae. Augustine was familiar with his African prede¬
cessor’s work, and self-consciously sought to improve on it and surpass it. 35

Authorities

As an accomplished rhetorician Lactantius knew that the skilful deployment
of evidence was crucial if he was to make a convincing case against the cult
of the gods and for Christianity. 36 His choice of authorities is striking in a
Christian apologist. He makes heavy use of non-Christian authorities, both
human and divine, and relatively rarely cites Scripture. 37 The African
apologist M inucius Felix had shown the way in his altogether slighter work
Octavius, in avoiding Scripture and employing categories that went back to
Cicero and Stoic philosophy. In Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, human
testimonia come down to the triad of the common man (vulgus), poets and
philosophers. M inucius Felix reproduces this triad. 38 Lactantius is not

33 1.1.12; cf. Cic. Leg. 1.14.

34 5.4.3.

35 Lactantius andAugustine: O'Daly (1999), 40-52; Garnsey (2002).

36 To be noted also is his repeated insistence, against a backdrop of persecution, that matters
of conscience and belief should be settled by argument rather than force. See esp. 5.19-20.

37 M onat (1982), 20, finds that there are 92 biblical citations, of which 73 are from the Old
T estament.

38 Oct. 18.1. Clarke (1974) is an excellent commentary on this work.

INTRODUCTION

entirely neglectful of the common man. Early in Book 1 he intimates that if
he were to give the question of divine providence proper treatment, he would
begin by using theevidenceof ordinary people everywhere. 39 However, heis
more inclined to lean on auctores, that is, on literature, poets and
philosophers, to whom he will add, where it helps his case, historians and
orators. 40 Cicero, his favourite author, is presented as both philosopher and
orator. The relative si delining of thevulgus in Lactanti us is not unconnected
with the fact that his target audience are docti, learned pagans, rather than
the mass of indocti. Histactic isin linewith the' advice' given to Christians
by the pagan critic of Christianity, Celsus, to turn for guidance to the
divinely inspired poets, the wise men and the philosophers. 41

When it comes to divine testimony, Lactantius makes a decisive move
away from scriptural authority, specifically the prophets, early in Book 1. He
goes back on this resolution only in Book 4, which is his exposition of the
life and mission of Christ as foretold by the prophets. 'Their evidence’, he
says, 'is now relevant. In my earlier books I held off.’ 42 In stressing pro¬
phecy, Lactantius is again working within the framework established in the
rhetorical tradition: Cicero’s category of 'divine testimony’ begins with
oracles and prophecy. 43 As Christian apologist, however, he has in mind for
prophecy the special role of linking the Old and New Testaments. Thus in
Book 5 he will claim, in refuting an unnamed pagan critic of Christianity
(apparently Hierocles) who was comparing Christ unfavourably with the
pagan wonder-worker Apollonius of Tyana, that Christ is proven to be the
son of God not by his miracles, but by the fact that he fulfilled the predic¬
tions of the prophets. 44

Pagan critics condemned the scriptures for being inferior literature, full
of contradictions, and recent and novel. Lactantius tried to counter these
charges. 45 But the crucial point for him in determining his rhetorical strategy
was that his opponents refused to accept the testimony of the scriptures as
divine. So an argument based on Scripture would never get off the ground.

39 1.2.4; cf. Cic. N.D. 1.24.61.

40 E.g. 1.11.33ff. (Euhemerus, Ennius); 1.14.1 (Ennius); cf. 5.4.6; 2.10.9ff. (historians
etc.); 7.22.2 (orators).

41 E.g. 5.4.6: docti homines ac diserti; Celsus in Origen, c. Cels. 7.41.

42 4.5.3.

43 Cic. Part. Orat. 2.6.

44 5.3.18-21. The fact that pagan polemic had singled out the lack of education and alleged
untrustworthiness of Christ's disciples, particularly Paul and Peter, would have only stiffened
Lactantius' resolve not to argue from the New Testament (cf. n. 37, above). See 5.2.17-3.3.

45 4.5.9-10; 5.2.13-16.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

As he says early in Book 1: 'Let us put the testimony of the prophets to one
side, in case there is something unsatisfactory in a proof apparently
dependent on sources which are wholly unacceptable.' 46 The implication of
a passage in Book 3 is that the citing of Scripture is an alternative to
producing 'fact and proof’. 47 In Book 5 he comments on the same issue at
the expense of Cyprian, who had misguidedly attempted to refute Deme-
trianus from the scriptures: 'Demetrianus should have been rebutted with
arguments based in logic, and not with quotations from scripture, which he
simply saw as silly fiction and lies.’ 48 The better strategy was 'to cite in
evidence people who are often used against us’. 49 This means, in the first
instance, poets and philosophers, but secondly, divine or quasi-divine testi¬
mony which also came from (or purported to come from) the pagan camp:
the prophetic pronouncements of Hermes Trismegistus, the Sibylline
Oracles, Apollo and others. The latter sources, he claims in Book 7, 'simply
have to be believed by those who reject the truth'. 50

Hermes was a popular divinity under whose name circulated two broad
kinds of literature, technical treatises of magic and astrology, and philoso¬
phical books bringing together Egyptian and Greek religion and Hellenistic
phi losophy. L actanti us' i nterest was i n the Iatter. H e quoted from the H erme-
tica selectively to suit his argument. Thus, for example, we find that Hermes
is judged to have said the right things about the nature of God, teaching the
'supremacy of the one and only God most high’, who is'lord and father’, but
himself without mother or father, and without name and the need of one,
because unique. 51 In general, 'he said everything about God the father and
much about the son which is contained in the divine secrets’. 52 Lactantius
was uncertain how to classify Hermes: was he divine or human, his works
revelation or speculation? At one point, he opts for the description similis
divino; at another, he wonders whether he belongs among the philosophers,
perhaps on a level with Plato and Pythagoras. He concedes that there are
'more reliable’ testimonies, 'from oracular responses and sacred songs',
meaning the Sibyl line Oracles and Apollo. 53 Lactantius is unique among the

46 1.5.1.

47 3.1.10.

48 5.4.4.

49 1.5.2.

50 7.13.2.

51 1.6.4; cf. 4.7.3,13.2. SeeFestugiere(1950) and (1967), esp. 28-99; Fowden (1986), 205-11.

52 4.27.19; cf. 4.9.3: 'somehow traced out almost all truth'; see also 2.15.6.

53 1.6.6; 7.13.4-5.

INTRODUCTION

major early Christian writers in trying to make constructive use of Hermes in
the cause of Christianity. 54

The Sibylline Oracles, as we have them, are 4230 lines of Greek hexa¬
meters divided into 14 books (but numbers 9 and 10 are lost, and 8 does duty
for three books). 55 Books of prophecy were attributed to the prophetess
Sibyl, along with other mythical or semi-mythical characters such asOrpheus,
Epimenides, Bacis and M usaeus, at least as early as the sixth century BC.
The Sibyl was already known to and cited by Heracl itus. The number of Sibyls
grew thereafter, notably in the Hellenistic period. As Lactantius reports, ten
were known to Varro. 56 The Romans placed a high value on the Sibylline
Oracles from early days. In myth their acquisition is associated with Tarquin,
and they come into Livy’s narrative from the third decade. The collection at
Rome seems to have contained predictions concerning prodigies and other
strange or calamitous events such as natural disasters or foreign invasions.
Using the present tense, Lactantius says they are still retained and used,
presumably in Rome. He adds that the secrecy of the Cumaean Sibyl's
oracles is respected. J ulian theApostateas emperor wrote to Rome to order
the consultation of the Sibylline books. They were destroyed during the
reign of Honorius by order of Stilicho in the first decade of the fifth century. 57

The special value of the Sibylline Oracles to Lactantius is that they are
(he claims) the testimonia of the pagans’ own gods, and he can therefore
quote them at his opponents with impunity. A she says in Book 1: 'what better
than to rebut them with evidence from their own gods?' 58 In fact, the existing
Sibylline books, especially numbers 3 to 5, bear the marks of the creative
activity of J ewish and Christian writers. The col lection Lactantius was using
was probably put together in the third century AD, on the basis of earlier
models. Augustine had access to still another version that was circulating in
North Africa a century after Lactantius. Lactantius knew, and admits, that
C hristians were accused of fabricating such texts (Origen records a complaint
of Celsus about the practice), but he hides behind Cicero and Varro, and
applies what they say of the ancient oracles to the documents that he has. 59

54 Contrast Augustine, civ. 8.23; c. Faust. 13.1.15 (M anichees use Hermes, among other
authorities).

55 See Fontaine (1978); Guillaumin (1978). For the texts see Geffcken (1902), and for an
English translation see Chariesworth (1983), vol.l, 335-472 (Collins).

56 1.6.6ff.

57 See Rut. Nam. Red. 2.52ff., 55ff. (Stilicho’s act a worse crime than Nero's matricide).

58 1.6.17.

59 4.15.26-30; Origen, c. Cels. 7.53; cf. 5.62.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Lactantius uses the Sibylline Oracles extensively. There are 57 citations
of one or more verses. M oreover, 37 citations appear in Books 4 and 7 where
Lactantius is expounding Christian doctrine, and might have been expected
to have used the testimony of Scripture almost exclusively. A lengthy
prolegomenon at the beginning of Book 4 ends with the rei nstatement of the
testimony of the prophets. Then the doctrine of the Son of God is introduced.
'That he is the Son of God supreme and endowed with maximum power is
demonstrated not just by what the prophets say, which is unanimous, but
also by the predictions of Trismegistus and the prophecies of the Sybils.' A
citation from Trismegistus, and three from the Sibyls precede one from
Proverbs; the chapter is rounded off with two appropriate epithets for the son
of God, one each from Trismegistus and the Sibyl. 60 In Book 7 the Si by Is are
cited for (among other things) the Second Coming and the rule of the Great
King, a Golden Age as conjured up in Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue. 61 In
Lactantius’ view this age was wrongly attributed to the age of Saturn, but
while Vergil was in this respect in error, he was nonetheless the privileged
carrier of a correct and divinely inspired prophecy of the Sibyl. Lactantius
started something here. In no time (that is, in the Oration to the Assembly of
the Saints attributed to Constantine and dated to 325) the words of the Sibyl
were read as foretelling the birth of Christ and the salvation of the Golden
Agethathewould bring. 62 A century I ater A ugusti ne was credi ti ng the Si by I
with 'utterances that are manifestly references to Christ’, and speculating
that she might be included among the citizens of the City of God. 63

In presenting his wide variety of authorities Lactantius shows an intent
to secure a wide consensus behind his arguments. In this he is pursuing a
traditional and characteristically Stoic goal. He wanted (in Book 1) to bring
together human and divine authorities in service of the argument for
providence and a single god. Likewise (in Book 7) he sought to establish
agreement on the end of things between ' prophets of this world and prophets
of heaven’, or as he engagingly puts it elsewhere, 'prophets who act on
God’s inspiration and of all seers who act at the instigation of demons’. 64

60 4.6.

61 7.24.9-15.

62 0 ration to the Saints 18. For the date, see B arnes (2001). For the Sibyl, Vergil and Christ,
see Lane Fox (1986), 648-60, with bibliography; at 659-61 he treats the relation of Lactantius
and Constantine. See also M acCormack (1998), 23.

63 Civ. 10.27; 18.23. On Apollo, see 1.7.8-11, 13; 4.3.11; 7.13.1. On Hystaspes, see
7.15.18-19. See Nicholson (2001b), on the'foreign prophets'.

64 7.14.16,18.1.

INTRODUCTION

There is the further point, that these sources were sufficiently ancient to give
access to a time of primeval innocence and justice when, Lactantius
contends, God alone was worshipped. 65

A consensus so broad could notbe achieved withoutimplausibilitiesand
contradictions. No Christian apologistorChurch Father after Lactantius was
tempted to makelsaiah andjeremiah sharea bed with Apollo and Hystas-
pes. His harnessing of poetry to the cause was daring. His explanation for
using poetry was that, like philosophy, it was 'often used against us’; 66 but
this does not explain his enthusiasm for the poets, in which he surpassed
other Christian writers, and for that matter a number of pagan intellectuals.
The appeal to poets had its roots in the old idea that poetic utterance was
divinely inspired. There are traces of this still in Lactantius, in relation to
verses that he particularly admires, in, for example, Terence and Vergil. He
knows that philosophers were thought to have greater authority than poets.
Still, it mattered to him to show that poets came before the philosophers; the
oldest of them, Orpheus, was 'coeval with the gods’. 67 Poets, however,
freely invented and fantasised. Lactantius admits that they produced lies and
stupidities, but will not engage in diatribe against them, as Cicero did. 68
Instead he warns us against taking their words literally rather than seeking
their deeper significance. 69 For 'no poetical work is a total fiction'. 70 In
addition, he will lean on poetic authority, and couple it with that of Scrip¬
ture, in the most unlikely places, as in the discussion of the Last Days (and,
specifically, on the application of the divine fire to the pious and impious).
This culminates in the following audacious passage:

Some people think this is a poetic fabrication; they say it is impossible
because they don't know the poets' sources. Their view is not surprising.
What the poets report is inconsistent with reality; they may go much further
back than historians and orators and other sorts of writers, but because they
did not know the mystery of the divine promise, and mention of a future
resurrection had reached them only as a faint rumour, they passed it on as a
story without credibility, having heard it only casually. And yet they also

65 An observation of N icholson (2001b), 372-74.

66 1.5.2.

67 1.5.4, 15.5; cf. Epit. 4.1; 5.5.1. On Orphic literature and the Orphics see West (1983);
Graf (1993); Parker (1995).

68 Cic. N .D. 1.42ff., 2.70, with Pease's comm.

69 The principle of non-literal interpretation had already been employed by Stoics and
Christians vis-a-vis, respectively, myths and the Old Testament.

70 1.11.30. See also 1.9.8-10; 1.11.23-25, 30, 36; 1.19.5, 21.44.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

said they had no sure authority to follow, but only opinion; for instance,
Vergil says:' M ay it be right for me to say what I have heard.' Despite, then,
theirpartial distortion of thesecrets of truth, nevertheless the reality emerges
all the more truly because of their partial agreement with the prophets, and
that is sufficient for us as proof of the matter. 71

Lactantius regularly exposes the deficiencies of his secular sources.
Pagan prophecy, when it hits upon the truth, does so despite itself, and the
best of the human authorities - Cicero, Seneca, Plato, Vergil - necessarily
fall short because they lack knowledge of God. So how was the gap to be
filled? The gap is illusory. Lactantius makes great play of taking Scripture
out of the contest. It is regularly denied a voice and the best lines are usually
given to others - so, for example, to the Sibyl, on the Fall. 72 Still, Scripture
is often on stage as a mute actor, thereto confirm the validity of those lesser
authorities given the limelight. Thus in Book 2, where whether God made
man is under discussion, Lactantius writes:

Cicero, despite his ignorance of holy writ, saw it nevertheless; in book One
of On the Laws he recorded the same tradition as the prophets. I supply his
words [On the Laws 1.22 is then cited]. Can you see a man there who, for all
his distance from a knowledge of the truth, yet, because he could gaze on an
image of wisdom, did understand that man could not have been born except
of God? Even so, we need divine evidence, in case the human evidence is
inadequate. The Sibyl affirms that man is the work of God [a quotation
follows], H oly writ says the same. 73

The audience is regularly made aware that Scripture could beinvoked at
any time to pronounce on and settle the matter, whatever is at issue. In
practice he often decides that to do so would be unnecessary, since lesser
authorities do an adequate job by themselves. 74 A nd he is not without the
ambition to give his own exegesis of Scripture, which will sometimes act as
an alternative to direct quotation. 75 A passage near the end of Book 7 is his
last look at the matter of authorities, and nicely sums up his attitude. The

71 7.22.1-4.

72 2.12.17-20.

73 2.11.15-18.

74 M onat (1982), vol. 2,19, n. 46, gives as examples 1.5.1; 3.1.10; 5.4.4-8; 7.5.21.

75 Note 'not my own words' in the citation that follows. Lactantius leaves himself some¬
thing to do, and this is important. I n some contexts, he will take a secular source as far as he can
and himself supply what is missing. See e.g. 6.8.11: Cicero at his most inspired has to be
supplemented by Lactantius himself. Here the author virtually assumes the role of a prophet, a
role to which a mere philosopher could not aspire.

INTRODUCTION

subject is the millennium, which he has just described with the aid of the
Sibyls and Vergil. He goes on:

This is what the prophets said would happen. I have not thought it necessary
to set out what they say in evidence because it would go on for ever; my
book could not manage so much material when so many people are saying
the same things in the same spirit, and I would not want to bore my readers
by piling up stuff gathered from all of them; besides, what I would be saying
would simply be confirmation drawn from the writings of others, not my
own words, and I would be pointing out that the truth is kept recorded not
just with us, but also with those very people who keep persecuting us -
though it is a truth which they refuse to acknowledge. Anyone wanting to
know this more precisely should go to the fountainhead itself; they will
discover more wonderful things than I have managed to get into these books
of mine. 76

There is therefore no genuine authority-gap: Scripture is forever hover¬
ing in the wings. When Lactantius wishes to use it, he deploys it with skill.
It remains the case, however, that a summa theologiae which does not draw
its strength from detailed and sustained biblical exegesis and interpretation
is problematic. Lactantius sacrificed quite a lot (J erome thought too much)
in choosing to conduct a dialogue with the pagans as much as possible on
their terms, in approaching them through Classical literature and philo¬
sophy. This was a medium to which he was very attached. He had been
reading Cicero and Vergil and the rest all his working life.

3. WISDOM, RELIGION, AND J USTICE

Lactantius is directing his message at men of education and culture, who
were also, necessarily, prominent in society and politics. To win them over
he must convince them that his religion is intellectually respectable and
satisfying. He must in the process unseat the philosophers, the self-
appointed champions and commonly accepted models of sapientia. He has
to show that their idea of wisdom is empty and false, that true wisdom is not
philosophy, but rather religion, which is knowledge and worship of the one
true God. Fusing religio and sapientia and establishing the exclusive claim
of Christianity to bring them together is a preoccupation with him, and holds
the key to the structure of the Divine Institutes. He was the first Christian
apologist to pursue such a project systematically. Justin Martyr labelled

76 7.25.1-2.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Christianity 'the divine philosophy’, and searched for 'Christians before
Christ’as part of a wider plan of reconciling philosophy and Christianity.
0 thers, notabl y T ertul I ianandtheG reek apol ogi sts Tati an and T heophi I us of
Antioch, viewed philosophy with hostility. 77 Lactantius takes up a middle
position, using philosophy where he can to advance his case, but also
refuting its claims and undermining its achievements. Augustine in On True
Religion shows a similar interest in bringing together religio and sapientia,
and shows himself to be in Lactantius’ debt in other ways, even if without
direct acknowledgement. 78

L actanti us begi ns on a positive note, appeari ng to prai se phi I osophers as
men of genuine intelligence who devoted themselves to learning and the
search for truth - even in some cases giving up their domestic life and
renouncing all pleasure in the cause - rather than to piling up wealth and
honours. They were absolutely right to do so, for these latter pursuits are
fragileand earthly and have to do solely with the body; they cannot make us
better people. He will shortly evoke the example of someone he genuinely
admired, Cicero, when referring to great orators who 'have emerged from
their life’s work of pleading to turn in the end to philosophy'. 79 Cicero had
abandoned public life (in fact he was forced off the political stage), and
turned to philosophy. In the preambles of all the three books of On Duties,
Cicero explains and justifies this choice, in terms of the desirability of
seeking wisdom with the practical end in view of laying down canons of
conduct (praecepta vitae). In Book 3 he writes to his son thus: 'Now, my
dearCicero, whilethe wholeof philosophy isfertileand fruitful, and no part
of it uncultivated and abandoned, still none of its topics is more productive
and richer than that of duties; we derive from them advice for living with
constancy and honour.' 80 Lactantius evidently regards his own experience,
just presented, in changing from rhetorician into Christian apologist, as
parallel to Cicero's (1.1.8-10), except that he, unlikeCicero, knowstheway
to true wisdom.

But the first paragraph in D i vine Institutes also contains veiled criticism,
in the allusion to 'some' philosophers who gave everything away. They are
the same people who in Book 3 are called lesser figures (minores) as opposed

77 Justin, II Apol. 12.5. For Christianity and philosophy, see Spanneut (1957); Chadwick
(1966); Osborn (1997). Lactantius had already called Christianity the true philosophy in the
earlier work 0 pit. dei, 20.1.

78 Bochet (1998); Garnsey (2002).

79 1.1.11.

80 Cic. Off. 3.2.5; cf. 1.2.4; 2.2.4.

INTRODUCTION

to the leaders in the field (principes), and are sharply criticised for their
attitude to property. They boast of and are praised for contempt of money,
butwould more properly be accused of negligence for passing up the oppor¬
tunity of giving to the poor. Democritus is one of them. 81

Ambivalence towards philosophers is typical of Lactantius. Even when
he praises them he will mention their deficiencies: 'It is enough for the
moment to show that men of the greatest ability had reached the truth and
had almost grasped it, except that they were hauled back by a deep-dyed
habit of mistaken thinking.' 82 In any case, in this opening chapter he moves
soon enough into a general criticism of all philosophers. They were all, to a
man, ignorant. They did not realise that truth is secret, hidden and holy
(arcanum, sacramentum), God’s possession alone, beyond the ken of man,
accessible only by revelation. Other faults stem from this central one. The
philosophers are unsuitable guides, not surprisingly, because they are them¬
selves ignorant. They also disagree among themselves, another sure sign
that they do not know the truth, which is 'clear and lucid’. 83 The fact is that
religion and wisdom are inseparable. With this he ends the introduction to
the book, and to the whole work. 84

The next step in the argument is to blame the philosophers for the
divorce between wisdom and religion. Insofar as they exposed the errors of
false religion, they gave the impression of being wise. But their wisdom
turned out to be hollow, in that they were incapable of ushering in true
religion in pi ace of the false. This was because they did notknow whatitwas
I ike or whereto locate it. instead they either maintained their allegiance to a
religion they knew to be false or they rejected religion entirely. This position
is adumbrated in Book 2 and argued expansively in Book 3. 85 in the latter
book he fills out his charge of ignorance, while 'admitting' that it was not
much of an achievement to demonstrate this, as they 'perish on their own
swords’. 86 The best of them (Socrates, Cicero as New Academician) confess

81 Lactantius was not predisposed to favour Democritus, as the co-founder of atomism,
which became a central doctrine of his bete noire, Epicureanism. For the story of Democritus'
abandoning of his property see Cic. Fin. 5.29.4; Sen. Prov. 6.2.

82 1.5.28.

83 1.1.21.

84 He returns to the same theme at the end of the book, with a reference to the caelestis
disciplinae sapientia, 1.23.9.

85 2.3.12, 22; 3.28 (summary).

86 3.28.20. This, however, is overmodest of Lactantius. There is much to admire in the skill
with which he uses the philosophers to undermine themselves.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

that they can know nothing. Even this admission, he goes on to say, is off-
beam. Wisdom is 'in not thinking you know everything, which is God’s
portion, and in not thinking you know nothing, which is an animal's portion.
For in man’s portion there is something in between, which is knowledge
combined with and tempered by ignorance.’ 87 In any case the philosophers
condemn themselves in other ways, by their disagreements, their moral
behaviour and their elitism. He promises to provide in the next book (Book
4) an elucidation of the nature of true wisdom and true religion.

Where is true wisdom to be found? M an is capable of seeking wisdom
but will never find it under his own steam. He has to receive it from without,
by divine revelation, in particular through the agency of Christ, who was
sent into the world precisely to teach wisdom. Lactantius in treating the
salvific role of the Son is less interested in the passion of Christ than in his
function as teacher (doctor, magister) and as a model of virtue. 88 W here is
true religion to be found? In a religion that recognises the stature and
significance of man, improves his moral behaviour, and offers worshippers
an intellectual and spiritual approach to their creator (rather than mere
physical performance of sacrifice and ritual, as is the case with the cult of the
gods). Wisdom and religion come together in the worship of the true God. It
is the function of wisdom to understand and the function of religion to
honour. They belong in this order, in that knowing God is the initial step that
leads to the proper worship of him.

At this point in the argument the dualism religio/sapientia becomes a
triad with the addition of iustitia, justice. How is God to be worshipped?
That is the work of justice. J ustice is giving God his due, that is, worshipping
him, and then giving man his due, that is, treating him with fairness and
humanity. Justice, in other words, has two component parts, pietas and
aequitas. Books 5 and 6 are dominated by justice, its definition and eluci¬
dation. The trail is already being laid in the early books. In Book 2 the just
are described as the worshippers of God. 89 In Book 3 Lactantius asks what
the essence of man is, why we are here, and answers, in order to worship
God who created us to serve him. What does this involve? The service of
God is simply to guard and preserve justice by good actions. As to justice,

87 3.6.2.

88 I n A ugusti ne'sOnTrueReligion (e.g. at 55.110) Christ appears as magister sapientiae or
Sapienti a. The work was composed in 390, in a period where ‘A ugusti new as still firmly rooted
in the old world' (Brown 1967,146). It reveals the influence of Lactantius. See Bochet (1998).

89 2.14.3 (cultores dei).

INTRODUCTION

that is piety, and piety is the recognition of God as Father. 90 A little later
Lactanti us takes Plato to task. W hi Ie he appreciated the other main aspect of
justice, fairness or aequitas, he misread it disastrously in constructing his
ideal state. For justice cannot be identified with any particular social
arrangements, and certainly not with the sharing of wives and property. 91
Then in Book 4 Christ is described variously as teacher of wisdom, virtue
and justice. 92

4.THE SUPREME GOOD,VIRTUE ANDJUSTICE

There is a second route to justice in Divine Institutes, leading through the
proper definition and exposition of man’s final end of happiness and the
nature of virtuous living, in the course of his intellectual journey along this
route, Lactanti us will produce a systematic statement of Christian ethics, the
first of its kind from a Christian thinker. This work is begun in Book 3, and
reaches its consummation in Books 5 and 6.

M oral philosophy, Lactantius thinks, should serve as the guide for man
in his search for self-improvement and a better life. Indeed, this is the only
branch of philosophy worth engaging in, as alone concerned with producing
happiness. 93 Unfortunately, its practitioners have let people down by their
chronic inability to agree, their failure to offer anything to improve our lives,
and their wrongheaded searching for happiness in our world. Lactantius
could demonstrate this in laborious detail, but will choose instead a test-
case, the item 'which is most important, the hinge on which all wisdom
turns’, namely, the supreme good (summum bonum). 94

Supreme Good

The supreme good must fulfil three requirements. First, it has to be a pro¬
perty of man alone, and must not be shared with the lesser animals. 95 This
knocks out such things as physical pleasure, release from pain, or living in
accordance with nature (the claims of all of which had been advanced by
some philosophers). The second criterion is closely associated with thefirst:

90 3.9.14-19.

91 3.21-22.

92 4.11.14, 12.15, 13.

93 3.7.1-3.

94 3.7.6.

95 3.8.3.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

the supreme good is a property of the spirit, not the body. The body, at its
best, as when it manifests physical courage, is striving for its survival, for
'life for a while’, whereas the spirit 'wants life eternal'.“Thirdly, one must
have know I edge and virtue in order to attain the supreme good. In fact, of the
various candidates for the supreme good advanced by philosophers, know¬
ledge and virtue are the most promising. Both are peculiar to man and involve
the spirit. Knowledge, however, is sought for the sake of something else. 97 In
any case, we have to ask, knowledge of what? The Christian answer must be
knowledge of good and evil. But knowledge will only bring results, it will
only lead to the adoption of good and the avoidance of evil, if it is accom¬
panied by virtue. Similarly, virtue is not the supreme good itself, but is rather
a necessary condition of attaining it. This last criterion, the need to have
know I edge and vi rtue, el i mi nates the phi I osophers because of thei r i ntel I ectual
and moral deficiencies. Knowledge means, in effect, knowledge of God. The
philosophers did not know God, and so their wisdom was empty and false.
As to virtue, here the philosophers missed out because they did not exercise
justice, which is 'mother of all the virtues'. 98 J ustice, we recall, is in the first
instance piety, knowing and worshipping the true God. And God’s gift to
those who honour him is eternal life. The supreme good turns out to be, then,
nothing less than immortality, which is 'the only thing that cannot be dimin¬
ished, enlarged or changed’. 99 This is the conclusion that Augustine will
reach more than a century later, following the trail blazed by Lactantius. 100

Virtue

In Divine Institutes, Lactantius engages actively with Cicero’s thinking on
practical ethics. Cicero, especially in On Duties (De Officiis) set out actions
that are morally justifiable, those that a vir bonus might perform, that is, his
officia, and he analyses those actions in terms of the four cardinal virtues,
courage, temperance, wisdom and justice. Lactantius too is centrally con¬
cerned with the duty of man, 101 but presents an account that diverges from
Cicero’s at a number of points. Crucially, the unifying idea in Cicero that

96 3.12.6.

97 3.8.24.

98 3.22.5

99 3.12.10; cf. 3.10: the summum bonum consists in religion alone.

100 Civ. 19.1-4.

101 3.8.3 (cum de officio hominis agatur). Officium is frequently coupled with virtus, or
iustitia, e.g. 3.21.1; 4.24.7.

INTRODUCTION

man’s duties were played out in the public arena, and were owed to the
social and political community, gives way to Lactantius’ insistenceon man's
duty to God and his neighbours, including the most humble and poor. In the
process, the virtues are overhauled, and a new understanding of the moral
life, its character, its goals and its exemplary practitioners, is substituted for
the old.

The groundwork islaid in Book 3. The pursuitof happiness, itisagreed,
is the business of moral philosophy. Butin Lactantius' view, ethical teaching
and practice carry a serious health risk: any mistake can mean that one's
whole life is wrecked. 102 With so much at stake it is not surprising to find that
following the path of virtue is fraught with danger. Whereas the Stoics held
that virtue was sufficient for a happy life, for Lactantius a virtuous life
cannot be a state of bliss, for virtue is under constant siege from lust, vice
and sin. 'All its natural energy goes in the endurance of evil.' 103 'The only
way in which we can know bliss in this life is to think ourselves minimally
blissful, to shun the temptations of pleasure, to serve virtue alone, and to live
with maximum toil and misery, forthat isthetraining ground of virtue where
virtue gets its strength... ' 104 It’s hard work to attain the supreme good.

At the root of these thoughts is an attempt to give a (non-M anichee)
answer to the problem of evil. The result is bold and distinctively Lactanti an:
'The purpose of evil is to test a man for virtue, because if his virtue is not
stirred and strengthened by constant assault it cannot come to perfection;
virtue is the brave and indomitable endurance of evils that have to be
endured. H ence the fact that vi rtue cannot exist if it has no adversary.' 105 T he
idea of virtue and vice as mutually dependent opposites is a leitmotiv
running through the whole work, linking up with other themes and sub¬
themes, and thoroughly integrated with the rest of his moral philosophy. 106

102 3.7.37.

103 3.11.9

104 3.12.35.

105 3.29.16. The origin of this doctrine may lie in Stoicism. For the argument that you can't
have good without bad, see Geilius 7.1 = SVF 2.1169 = LS 54Q, quoting Chrysippus; cf.
Plutarch 1050F, 1051A-B =SVF 2.1181 =LS 61R. I owe these references to Malcolm Scho¬
field. However, no thinker, to my knowledge, develops the argument with reference to virtue as
L actanti us does.

106 The doctrine of the interdependence of virtue and vice is associated with two passages
that occur only in M SS R and S, and for this reason, and because of their alleged 'dual-
i Stic’ character, are commonly thought to be later additions made by the author, revising hisown
text. The two passages in question are 2.8.6a-6i; and 7.5.27a-q, as printed here. See Heck
(1972) for a full statement of the argument, and Heck (1975) for a brief summary; also, Perrin

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

The choice of patientia as an exemplary virtue follows naturally from the
previous argument:

With reference to the present enquiry it is sufficient to prove what we mean
by taking one virtue. One important and principal virtue is certainly endur¬
ance. It wins high and frequent praise equally in the talk of ordinary people
and from philosophers and orators. Its very high position among the virtues
cannot be denied; but the just and wise have to be in the power of the unjust
in order to develop it, endurance being the bearing with equanimity of ills
whether imposed or accidental. Because a just and wise man is virtuous, so
endurance is with him already: but it will be missing entirely if he suffers no
adversity. 107

Lactantius is leaning hereon Seneca, whom he admired. 'Hecould have
been a true worshipper of God if anyone had shown him how.’ 108 It was
Seneca who redefined the canonical virtue of fortitudo by shifting its focus
from the display of physical courage on the battlefield to the endurance of
suffering inflicted from without, as by a tyrant. 109 Lactantius cites Seneca in
this section, but only for the further idea that the suffering of the good is part
of God’s plan to keep his people free from corruption: 'The good, whom he
loves, he chastises quite often, and gives them constant troubles to exercise
their virtue, not allowing them to become corrupt and depraved by goods
that are perishable and mortal.’ 110 The earlier African apologists for Christ¬
ianity, Tertullian and Cyprian, had singled out patientia for brief, mono¬
graphic treatment. It was left to Lactantius to give it the special twist that it

(1974), 86-94. The passage in Book 7 appears to be completely in tune with the other texts
scattered through the work that deal with the relation of good and evil, virtue and vice; the
passage in Book 2 discusses the creation of evil by God in more detail than elsewhere - but note
that there is continuity with the passage immediately preceding, in 2.8. The case for L’s dualism
is greatly overstated. L. believed that evil came from God, in the sense that it was God who
created a corruptible spirit (and later, mankind, similarly liable to corruption), which 'changed
from good to evil and of its own choice’. God did this so that man could become virtuous, for
without vice to pit oneself against, one cannot achieve virtue. This is a world away from the
dualism of theM anichees, which involved an evil principle that rivalled the good Creator. That
movement was very much a force at the time; indeed Diocletian attacked M anichaeism, in a
rescript that survives, shortly before he turned his attention to Christianity. See Collatio 15.3 (=
Stevenson 1968, 245).

107 5.22.2-4.

108 6.24.14.

109 See Shaw (1996).

110 5.22.12. Chastisement of the good is of course a repeated Old Testament idea, picked up
in the New Testament. See e.g, Hebr. 12:1-11, citing Prov. 3:11-12.

INTRODUCTION

was a virtue that can only appear in adversity, and to include it within a
comprehensive account of the moral life of a Christian bonus vir.

Towards the end of Book 3, Lactantius considers the proposition that
man can in fact achieve perfect bliss on earth, if he endures pain, torture,
death, yes, even death on the cross, for his faith, for justice, for God. 111 The
transition is easy to the presentation (in Book 4) of the suffering Christ as the
only wise and virtuous man that the world has known. 112 Later, in Book 5,
martyrs are marked out as the true models of virtue, displacing the heroes of
old Rome. The comparison is the starker in that Lactantius chooses women
and children for his exemplary martyrs. How did Rome's heroes fall short?
Regulus opted to keep his oath and deliver himself up to his enemies in
Carthage, and suffered in consequence. His choice was an honourable one,
butitwould still becompletely misguided to imagine that he was'happy in
the blessedness of a vi rtuous soul’, for he worshi pped false gods. H is patriot¬
ism, however, can function asa good example for Christians to follow in the
service of their own, eternal fatherland. 113

Finally, for those who suffer for Christ there is a reward in store,
immortality, eternal life, the supreme good. Otherwise, Lactantius insists, a
life of virtue would make no sense at all. 114

Lactantius has saved for the end justice, 'the mother of the virtues’, and
that is the subject of Books 5 and 6.

J ustice 115

'Justice embraces all the virtues together, but there are two chief virtues
which cannot be split off and separated from it, piety and fairness (aequi-
tas).' 116 El sew here these central aspects of justice are defined in terminology
taken over from Classical philosophy. J ustice is giving what is due, first to
God and then to humanity. 117 The principal ingredients of justice emerge in

111 3.27.4ff. It is not entirely clear whether Lactantius is conceding the possibility of
happiness on earth; he seems to be using Stoic and Epicurean claims ironically here.

112 4.24.7, 12, 19; 26.24ff.

113 5.13.13-15. In treating martyrs as heroes, Lactantius is anticipating a favourite theme
of Augustine.

114 3.27.

115 For Lactantius on justice, see Loi (1965; 1966); Heck (1978); Buchheit (1979b);
Piccaluga (1996); Heim (1996).

116 5.14.9,11.

117 6.10.1; cf. Augustine, civ. 19.21 (giving God his due).

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

outline from the 'brief history of justice' that comes early in Book 5. 118 The
G olden A ge of Saturn was an age of justice precisely because, i n L actanti us'
innovative reconstruction, the one God was worshipped and the officia of
justice, namely, humanitas, aequitas and misericordia, operated among
men. All thiscameto an abrupt end when J upiter drove out his father Saturn
and established a regime of violence, greed and gross inequality: in a word,
injustice. God sent justice back into the world in the person of Christ, but no
second Golden Age could ensue, for most people were (and are) ignorant of
the one God, worshipping many gods, and they pursued self-aggrandise¬
ment rather than serving their neighbours, and, to cap it all, declared war on
thefew who were just (a war which at the time of writing was at its height).

To establish justice as uniquely Christian Lactantius sets out to demon¬
strate that it was absent in traditional Roman society. He begins with pietas
and moves on to aequitas, but in fact these two aspects of justice are hardly
separable in his analysis. In Book 6 we are told that what is granted to man
as his due (namely aequitas/humanitas) is also granted to God, because man
is made in God’s likeness; 119 and the whole purpose of that book is to show
'how to worship God’ in the context of social relationships. So, herein Book
5 Lactantius sets about demolishing 'their sort of piety’ by looking at'what
they do in kindness and piety’. Aeneas, farfrom being the model pious man
(as Vergil, who should have known better, represented him), was a ruthless
killer who butchered captive enemies at the altar: 'Could anyone think he
had a particle of virtue in him, when he blazed in frenzy I ike stubble, unable
to bridle his wrath, forgetting the spirit of his father, in whose name he was
entreated? Not pious, then, no way: he killed not only those who yielded
without resistance but even those who prayed to him.’ 120 The spotlight is on
his behaviour towards other men rather than his religious affiliations, though
Lactantius will go on to trace the morality of a society back to the values and
behaviour of the gods that are worshipped. With gods like those that the
Romans worshipped - bloodthirsty, patricidal, adulterous, cheating - they
could hardly be good and just. Everything, therefore, stems from the
worship of falsegods. Lactantius’ preferred way of dealing with pagan piety,
however, is simply to eliminate it by definition: 'If then piety is to know God,

118 This runs parallel to, and is in a sense a rival to, the rather more elaborate history of
religion of Book 1. The implications for the composition of the work are explored by Fredouille
(1978) and Inglebert (1996).

119 6.10.

120 5.10.9.

INTRODUCTION

and the nub of getting to know God is to worship him, anyone without a cult
of God simply does not know justice... Plato said a great deal about a one
and only god as the maker of the world, but he said nothing of his worship;
he had dreamt his god: he did not know him.’ 121

If Lactantius was bold to attack the mythical founder of Rome, 122 he was
venturing on truly dangerous ground in denying Romans (and Greeks)
fairness on the grounds that they practised social inequality. 123 Christians
were open to the same charge. In fact, Lactantius did not himself believe in
a society in which all members were economically equal. 124 Here in Book 5
he beats a retreat and plumps for spiritual equality. Later, in Book 6, he
pursues a different strategy - safer, but nonetheless carrying bite - which
involves stressing the duty of the rich to distribute their surplus among those
in dire need. This is part of a more general claim that Christianity breaks new
ground in the realm of personal relationships.

in Book 6, Lactantius sets out, in clear rivalry with Cicero, the officium
of man. A whole superstructure, he declares, is lacking from Cicero's
account, and it will be his task to supply it by demonstrating how justice in
the sense of aequitas works. The essence of justice-on-the-ground is, quite
simply, to carry out God's commandment to love humanity. In interpreting
this divine law Lactantius marks out the gap between Christian and pagan
notions of charity, and does so more effectively than any other writer from
antiquity. There are two basic principles that must be applied. First, help
should go to those who most need it, which means those at the bottom of the
pile, the blind, the sick, the lame, the destitute - not, in other words, 'the
suitable’, including the worthy poor, who might have something to offer in
return. For, secondly, any hope or expectation of return must be discounted.
'M easure justice, which is mother and head of the virtues, at its own price
and not by its advantage to you.’ 125 'The only true and certain officium of
generosity is to feed the needy and the useless.’ 126 'The whole point (ratio)
of justice consists precisely in our providing for others through humanity
what we provide for our own family through affection.' 127

121 5.14.12-13.

122 However, T ertu 11 i an had been ruder to Aeneas in Adv. Nat. 2.9.12ff.

123 5.14.15 and 15.

124 Cf. Garnsey and Humfress (2001), 203-07.

125 6.11.16. But there is a return. See 6.12.2: he will have his reward from God; cf. 6.13: his
sins are wiped out.

126 6.11.28.

127 6.12.31.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

The traditional value system, in contrast, is obsessed with utilitas, the
pursuit of individual interests, and is blind to pity (misericordia). There are
philosophers - the reference is to the Stoics - who actually treat pity as a
vice, when it is man’s distinctive virtue. 128 But then, the Stoics treat all
emotions and passions that stir the soul as vices or maladies. This prompts
Lactantius into laying out his general position on the emotions. The result is
interesting. The emotions are natural, and it would be wrong as well as
impossible to try to root them out, as the Stoics want us to do. At this point
Lactantius’ favourite argument from the interdependence of virtue and vice
makes another appearance. If vice is removed from man, then virtue also
makes an exit. If there is anyone with no vices to struggle against, then he
will also be without virtues. 129 And again: the impulse to feel desire, joy, fear
and sorrow needs to be present in order to keep us on the path of duty. 130
Lactantius has more sympathy with the Peripatetics, who thought that we
should seek to control the emotions rather than to extirpate them. Butin his
view they should be not just controlled, but directed towards a desirable
end: so, for example, fear towards God, pity towards men in need, anger, as
in a paterfamilias towards a rebellious son, or in God over a sinner. 131 He is
less indulgent towards the sensual pleasures (voluptates), but still talks in
terms of recalling them to their proper purpose (ratio), rather than working
for thei r outright suppression. 132 Even lust, the only aspect of the pleasure of
touch that Lactantius is inclined to discuss, was implanted in man by God
because of two desirable functions, the reproduction of the species and the
winning of praise and glory for its containment. 133 in general, among early
Christian thinkers Lactantius does not belong on the puritan wing.

One part of his exploration of justice remains to be discussed: Carne-
ades' attack on justice and Lactantius' refutation of Carneades. This section
has attracted attention mainly because it preserves more of the argument
presented in the lost third book of Cicero’s Republic than does any other
ancient work. We learned from the discussion of the history of justice that
justice has existed on earth since the incarnation, but has not been
recognised, and the few who are just (and wise) are dismissed as fools. That

128 6.14.

129 6.15.5.

130 6.16.11.

131 Lactantius later composed a whole treatise On Anger.

132 6.20.

133 6.23.1-3. For Lactantius on the passions see Nicholson (1997); Ingremeau (1998). For
a summary of Classical philosophical opinions, see Gill (1997), and in detail, Sorabji (2000).

INTRODUCTION

is not surprising, since thosefew have such a miserabletimeof it, suffering,
as currently, persecution, torture and death. The persecution of the just was
foretold in Cicero (in the missing third book), where Furius says that only
the stupid would opt for justice if it carries misery in its train. 134 We don't,
however, have to accept the argument of Furius. In particular, it is not the
case that a wiseman would rather be bad and well thought of than good and
badly thought of. In any case, we can't be such fools if our numbers are
growing all the time. Our opponents tacitly admit we are not fools by
persecuti ng us. L actanti us spends a chapter ponderi ng the si gnificance of the
Christian virtue of endurance in the story of the expansion of Christianity.
Then he asks again why opponents of justice - and Carneades 135 has by now
replaced hisspokesman in Cicero’s treatise, Furius- wereableto getaway
with the assertion that the just are foolish. The short answer is that a justice
that had no roots, and had in any case not yet returned to earth, simply could
not be identified, let alone defended, by philosophers. This is the point at
which Lactantius produces, and arguesfor, hissummary definition of justice
as piety plus fairness. That done, he is now ready to take on Carneades.

Carneades' thesis is as follows. People make laws useful to themselves.
These laws are relative, not natural. Natural laws would be for the benefit of
others. If people aimed at the benefit of others, they would be hurting
themselves, which is folly. FI is first argument is from the public interest,
from empire. If successful imperialists sought justice, they would have to
return all their gains. Carneades next turns to private interest. Consider the
dilemma of a good man trying to sell a runaway slave or a house with defects
or copper pyrites for gold. It would be foolish for him to be honest, because
a poor price would be the consequence. The wise move would be to make a
dishonest profit. Or consider the good man’s dilemma where his own life is
at stake and he could save it, at the cost of another’s. Suppose that a stronger
man and a weaker man caught up in a storm at sea are in competition for a
plank that will save one of their lives. A just man who is stronger will let the
weak man have it, a wiseman who is stronger will push him off. In a parallel
example, two men are competing for the horse of a wounded man. in sum,
justice loses out in both civil law and natural law. Civil law is wise but not
just, while natural law is just but not wise.

In reply Lactantius is not unfriendly to Carneades, who, he says, got part
of the way: he knew that justice is not folly, and that the truth is hidden, and

134 5.12.

135 Carneades is not, of course, a simple opponent of justice, but it is with his arguments
against justice rather than his arguments in favour of justice that Lactantius wishes to engage.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

he used this to confirm his Academic-Sceptic stance. For Carneades was
bent on demonstrating that the truth was unknowable - hence he argued one
day for j usti ce and the next day agai nst j usti ce. L actanti us saves his barbs for
Cicero, who fudged the issue by having the pro-justice Laelius confine his
arguments to the action of communities rather than individuals. But
Carneades still has to be refuted. Cicero couldn'tdo it, but I, L actanti us, can.

Lactantius refutes Carneades by taking a high moral stand, by redefining
the key terms of folly and wisdom, and (the trump card) by introducing the
notion of a reward for virtuous behaviour. First, the struggle over a horse or
a plank would not happen to a just man, because he has no desire for
anything belonging to another. Anyway, he wouldn't be at sea or at war,
because he is not interested in gain, has enough food, and ranks murder as a
sin. Secondly, it is not folly to die rather than kill, but innocence. Death for
the sake of friendship or for a pledge is standardly taken as admirable. A life
laid down in innocence, a death for God, is better. And we die for God, not
just for other people. M ore generally, folly may be defined as straying in
deed orin word asa resultof ignorance of right and wrong. It would beasin
to deprive a wounded man of his horse or a shipwrecked man of his plank,
and a wise man refrains from sin. M an, having knowledge of good and evil,
is capable of refraining from harming his fellows. Animals lack this
capacity. They harm people to help themselves. As for wisdom, Carneades
'wished us to see’ that the man who stays mum over copper, slave or house
is not wise (sapiens) but smart (callidus et astutus). Dumb animals can be
smart too. Wisdom is something else: it is intelligence applied either to
doing good and rightorto refraining from unsound words and deeds.Thatis
why a wise man does not seek profit, but is sociable and generous, herein
displaying his kinship with God. Finally there are the consequences of
virtuous action to be considered. It is not foolish to be in need, or to die. A
good death is not the end. Virtue is not, pace Laelius, its own reward. A
human reward for virtue is not possible, but a divine reward is. Without it,
virtue would be the most useless and the most futile of things. 136

Carneades would perhaps have made mincemeat of Lactantius: certainly
the argument leaves much to be desired. 137 B ut let us put thi ngs i nto perspective.

136 Lactantius has not yet explained to his own satisfaction why God permitted justice to be
construed as folly. He addresses this question briefly, at 5.18.11. God, he says, hid virtue as
folly on purpose, to keep his truth secret, to condemn the things of this world, and to make the
path to immortality difficult.

137 Ingeneral I am inclined to the view that L actantius' intellectual sharpness and creativity has
been underestimated, while acknowledging that the level of his argument is uneven, as in this section.

INTRODUCTION

No other Christian writer attempted to refute Carneades’ case against justice.
Augustine in his skimpy treatment of the whole episode merely manipulates
Laelius’ defence of Roman imperialism for his own, theological, purposes.
Thus, he agrees with Laelius that'servitude' was advantageous 'to such men
as provincials are... when dishonest men are deprived of their freedom to do
wrong’, and applauds the way Laelius brought into play a supporting
argumentfrom the 'natural' subordination of human to divine, body to soul
and desires to reason. Augustine’s inference is that some people gain from
'servitude' to other men, and everyone from 'servitude' to God . 138

In general, we should not underrate the difficulty of constructing a
Christian moral philosophy that could compete with and override Classical
ethical systems. Lactantius’ pioneering work in this area deserves to be
recognised. Certainly Augustine's general debt to him is patent. There is a
clear Lactantian base to his account of the supreme good, of virtue and of
j ustice. The crucial idea that piety, the devoted worshi p of the C hristian G od,
is a necessary condition of justice and the other virtues, was Lactantian long
before it was Augustinian or Ambrosian . 139 The first substantial account of
what just behaviour towards others involved came from Lactantius rather
than one of his more illustrious successors. M eanwhile, there is much to
admire in the cleverness of the way that Lactantius turns the philosophers
against themselves by exploiting the sceptical arguments of Carneades.

5l SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS: THE GOLDEN AGE, OLD

ROME, ROME UNDER THE TETRARCHS, LAST THOUGHTS

Cicero in On Duties professes to be addressing the whole of life and more
particularly the behaviour of men in society. In fact he gives priority to certain
social obligations involving a restricted classof men. Obligations to parents
and to country comefirst, and the network of social relationships beyond the
family involves men of property and status, and, marginally, others of lower
standing judged to be capable and worthy (idonei) of some kind of exchange
of services. In discussing the virtues, even the primarily intellectual virtue of
wisdom, Cicero stresses the superiority of the life of action. For Cicero,
justice, the social virtue par excellence, is best exercised in practical services

138 Augustine, civ, 19.21. Ambrose, Off. 1.43, says merely that Cicero in his Republic
thought it important that a defence be presented against the argument against justice.

139 Ambrose, Off. 1.26.126: piety towards God is 'the foundation of aii virtues'; cf. 127:
‘the piety of justice’

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

to one's country. In Lactantius, the political or civic character of the virtues
has been replaced by a strong religious and personal orientation. Justice
gives everyone his due. But God has been left out of the equation by non-
Christian thinkers: God has not been given his due. The first duty of a just
man is towards God. The social dimension of justice that issues in the
commandment to love your neighbour is an extension of this primary obli¬
gation: pietas flows into aequitas. This precept is to be acted out in entirely
altruistic service of the rejects of society, not those capable of some kind of
reciprocity. Given these preoccupations of our author, it is obvious that we
should not expect to find in the work a systematic treatment of broader
issues of social and political morality. It does not follow, however, that
L actanti us had nothi ng coherent or i nteresti ng to say about such matters.

Lactantius’ thoughts about society and politics fall into three main
categories which flow into one another: a vision of an ideal society with an
emphasis on moral values and social relationships rather than on political
principles and institutions; criticism of the Roman state and its leadership in
the past; and criticism of present policy of Diocletian and the T etrarchy. A11
of this is more or less what might have been expected of a work written in the
midst of persecution by someone with pronounced millenarianist tenden¬
cies. There is no fourth category of ideas, namely a programme of political
and legal reforms put together for the benefit of Constantine, when he
suddenly and unexpectedly arrived on the scene as a Christian emperor, after
the composition of D ivine I nstitutes and before the death of its author.

Golden Age 140

In Book 5 Lactantius is working with, and correcting, the poets’ vision of the
Golden Age or the Age of Saturn. The main development is that in
Lactantius’ Golden Age there was no worship of the gods, only worship of

140 In Book 5 Lactantius countenances the historical existence in the past of a Golden Age
society as envisaged by the poets (but with significant adjustments). In Book 7, he is at pains to
assert that the Golden Age will occur, or rather, recur, in the future, following the return of
Christ to earth. The poets were at fault in believing that the 'divine visions' they were seeing
were of happenings that had a finite end (quasi iam peractis... quasi fieri ac terminari); their
readers followed them in thinking that ‘the events were things that were over and done with'
(completa esse iam veteribus saeculis ilia omnia putaverunt). For our purposes, the discussion
of the earl i er, Saturnian Golden Age, is the more useful because the more substantial, even if in
the author's scheme of things it is of less consequence for the history of humanity than the time
of the Second Coming, being an age of primeval innocence which ‘took place in the reign of a
mere man'. See 7.24.9-10; Nicholson (1985).

INTRODUCTION

the one true God. 'He constantly assumes, and assumes his readers will
agree, that Christianity, the Religion of the M ost H igh God, is the original
and natural religion of all mankind.’ 141 Everything flows from the exclusive
worship of God, first of all peace and harmony, the absence of foreign war
and civil strife. 'There simply were no swords to be bared at all.' 142 'What
then is piety? Where is it? What is it like? It exists where people know
nothing of wars, live in concord with all, are friendly even to enemies... ' 143
Lactantius has just graphically described the treatment meted out by the
'pious'Aeneas to his enemies, in the Golden Age of Saturn - as distinct from
the time of Jupiter, in whose reign Aeneas would presumably have been
completely at home - there were no enemies, and no imperialism:

Virtue: to believe your country's needs come first is, in the absence of human
discord utterly without substance.What are a country's interests other than
the disadvantage of some other community or people? Working land stolen
from others by violence, for instance, expanding one's own power and
levying heavier taxes: none of those is a virtue; they are the overthrow of
virtue. First of all, the ties of human society are removed, and so is inno¬
cence, and abstention from property of others, and justice itself: justice
cannot endure division in the human race. Wherever the weapons flash,
there is her inevitable rout and expulsion. 144

J ustice reigned, without the need for magistrates to enforce it. 'Honours and
purple robes and fasces' were an invention of J upiter: ' W hen he had con¬
quered his father in war and put him to flight, it was no kingship he then
exercised but an impious tyranny, of violence and armies; the golden age of
justice he removed...' 145 Lactantius is not impressed by political ambitions:
'Some he puffs up with ambition: they devote all their life's effort and
energy to exercising public office, so that they stand in the annals and give
their name to the year. Some in their greed aim higher, not wanting to be
briefly military commander of some province, but to be called lords of the
whole human race, with infinite and perpetual power.’ 146 'He' in the first
sentence is the devil himself.

141 N icholson (2001a), 185. A s B arnes (1981), 126ff., 184ff., observes, E usebius too held that
the original religion of mankind was Christianity, which he thought of as identical with the religion
of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. The idea was evidently current and'in the air’ c.AD 300.

142 5.5.4.

143 5.10.10.

144 6.6.18-20.

145 5.6.6.

146 6.4.21-22.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

No formal legal system was (is) required where the law of God held
(holds) sway:

How blessed and how golden the state of humanity would be if all the world
were civilised, pious, peaceful, innocent, self-controlled, fair and faithful!
There would be no need for so many different laws for the government of
mankind, because the one law of God would be enough for the accom¬
plishment of innocence, nor would there be need for prisons and warders'
swords, nor for the threat of punishment, since the wholesomeness of
heavenly commandment would be working in human hearts, forming them
freely to the practice of justice. 147 C ivil law, which varies everywhere accor¬
ding to custom, is quite different from true justice, which is uniform and
simple, being God's provision for us all... 148

Laws are an instrument of expediency, not justice. They were introduced to
serve the interests of J upiter and hisgreedy men of property: 'In thenameof
justice they authorised for their own purposes laws of great unfairness and
injustice, by which they could protect their greedy plunderings from mob
violence.' 149

J upiter was also presumably responsible for the introduction of 'punish¬
ments, prisons, armed warders’, in a word, penal law, as a weapon of coercion.
For Lactantius, killing of any kind is incompatible with the divine law, and
he specifies, among those kinds of killing that are permitted under the Roman
civil law, levelling a capital charge. Passing and executing a capital sentence
were apparently at least as reprehensible, in his view. The other officially law¬
ful acts that are picked out for condemnation are soldiering, smothering the
newborn and the exposure of babies. The list is not intended to be complete. 150

Social relationships in the Golden Age were governed by the divine law
of humanitas, aequitas and misericordia. But was there no private property,
as the poets would have it? Vergil is pronounced to be wrong on this point.
There was private property in the Golden Age, and the 'haves’ shared their
surplus generously with the 'have-nots’. It was not the existence of private
property that marked out the tyranny of J upiter from the Golden Age of
Saturn, but rather the way the propertied were given free rein under J upiter
to build up their estates and exploitthose economically and socially weaker:

147 5.8.8-9.

148 5.9.7.

149 5.6.3.

150 Presence at killing, e.g. at gladiatorial spectacles, is equally condemned: 6.20.15-26.
For condemnation of killing in general, see 6.20.15 n. 69. Tertullian had similar views on
soldiering: see 6.4.18, n. 13. On infanticide and exposure, see 6.20.18ff., with nn. 70-71.

INTRODUCTION

The source of all these evils is greed, and greed presumably erupted out of
contempt for the true superior power. Not merely did people of any
prosperity fail to share with others, but they also seized the property of
others, diverting everything to private gain, and what had previously been
worked even by individuals for the benefit of everyone was now piled up in
the houses of the few. To reduce the rest to servitude, they began first to
withdraw the necessities of life, gathering them in and keeping them firmly
locked up, so that the bounty of heaven became their bounty, not from any
humanitarian impulse - they felt none - but to rake in the means of avarice
and greed for themselves. 151

Lactanti us gets himself into atangleover social inequality. A few chapters
after his correction of Vergil over private property he interprets aequitas as
aequabilitas, or arithmetic equality, attributes to God as creator the desire
that all men should be'on a level, that is... equal’, and then asserts: 'Neither
Romans nor Greeks could command justice, because they kept people
distinct in different grades from poor to rich, from weak to strong, from lay
power up to the sublime power of kings... Where people are not equal, there
is no fairness: the inequality excludes justice itself. The whole force of
justice lies in the fact that everyone who comes into this human estate on
equal terms is made equal by it.’ 152 Soon afterwards he will say that he was
really talking about spiritual equality. This is not convincing. He has changed
his tune. There is not much doubt, however, that he accepted at least econo¬
mic inequality in the Golden Age and in his own society. G ross economic
inequality, though, and slavery, were innovations of Jupiter, in Book 3 he
scolds Plato for banishing private property from his ideal state. Having
everything in common, says Lactantius, is 'tolerable' as concerns money
(even if not women), but is nonetheless impossible and unfair, as he claims
he could demonstrate in many ways. 153 After a tirade against having women
in common, which 'produces adultery and lust', he identifies the source of
Plato’s mistake in his failure to appreciate that justice'operates entirely in
man's mind':

Anyone wanting equality among mankind should remove not marriage and
property but arrogance, pride and conceit, so that your men of power, the big
ones, realise they are equal with the poorest. If the rich lose their haughtiness

151 5.6.1-2.

152 5.14.19-20.

153 3.21.2-3. In Epit. 33.2 there are the beginnings of a justification of private property in
terms of the rewards for 'hard work’, and the penalties for 'failure': nec enim aut obesse
cuiquam debet, si sua industria plus habet, aut prodesse, si sua culpa minus.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

and intolerance, it won't matter whether some are rich and others poor,
because their souls will be at par, and the only thing capable of achieving
that is the worship of God. 154

This is a preview of his resolution of the dilemma of equality in Book 5.
There is a final touch before he finishes with Plato, yet another invocation of
the theory of the interdependence of virtue and vice of which he is so fond.
When Plato abolished private property, hewasalso getting rid of the virtues
of thrift and self-restraint, which meant that he was undermining justice,
'mother of the virtues'. 'Both virtue and vice take shape from the private
ownership of things; common ownership simply gives licence to vice.’ 155
Private property can be used well, as by the charitable rich under Saturn, 156
or badly, as by the greedy rich under J upiter. A pparently Lactantius believed
that justice could not exist, even in the Golden Age, unless both possibilities
were present. 157

Old Rome

There is an easy transition from J upiter's destruction of the Golden Age to
the story of early Rome. The mythical founder of Rome, the brutal rather
than pious Aeneas, encapsulates the values of an unjust society. J upiter as
'god' demanded human sacrifice, Aeneas performed it. 158 Then, King
Romulus killed his brother and was in his turn assassinated by the senators
whom he had himself assembled, a hundred 'skin-girt' old men, and nobody,
however humble, would have wanted to marry their daughters to them. In
order to stave off the inevitable charge of regicide, the senate through its
spokesman, Julius Proculus, hoodwinked the citizenry into thinking that
Romulus had become a god. 159 These same 'herdsmen' were themselves
easily persuaded by a foreign king, Numa, to accept the whole apparatus of

154 3.22.3-4.

155 3.22.5-7

156 In 6.9.8 Lactantius uses as a model the Athenian statesman Cimon, 'who gave food to
the needy, took in the poor, clothed the naked' - but all in vain, because he did not know God.
Clearly, the generosity displayed by Cimon and the Golden Age ‘haves' was compatible with
lasting inequality.

157 See, however, 3.21.3: holding property in common is impossible and unfair. 'But let us
allow its possibility: everyone is going to be wise and despise money.' Well, why not? And are
the wise here introduced to be credited with virtue, or not?

158 5.10.3-9; 1.21; cf. Epit. 18.1-2.

159 1.15.29-33; 2.6.13-16.

INTRODUCTION

pagan religion. Numa by this means 'soothed the savage temper of a new
people and drew them away from war to the pursuit of peace’. 160 His achieve¬
ment was ephemeral. Corruption set in quickly, through the agency of the
very gods who were being worshipped. W hat kind of a model, after all, did
J upiter, who expelled hisfather, provide? OrVenus, 'theprostituteof Olym¬
pus’? W hat do you think happens to you if you have before you the example
of 'gods of blood’, Mars and B el Iona? 161 In no time the Romans were
manipulating religion in order to expand their territory at the expense of
their neighbours and others further afield:

The gap between justice and expediency is well demonstrated by the people
of Rome, who got themselves control of the whole world by using Fetials to
declare wars and by using forms of law to cover their wrongdoings and to
seize and take other people's property. These Romans think they are just if
they do nothing against their own laws; but that can be put down to fear, if
they are kept from crime for fear of instant punishment. 162

One might say that the Romans were operating as a nation in the way that
Jupiter's men behaved at the private level in post-Golden Age society.

The passage just cited is as much about the exploitation of law as of
religion for purposes of Realpolitik. Lactantius goes on to single out the
Twelve Tables as a manifestation of how error-prone and unjust human
creators of law can be. So much for the much-vaunted Roman civil law!

Lactantius was the first Christian writing in Latin to attempt a general
account of the religious history of humanity and of Rome. 163 In line with his
preoccupation with religion rather than politics, when key figures in Rome's
history are presented asexempla, as they sporadically are, they are normally
assessed on moral or religious grounds. The notices are brief: there is not
much room for discussion or debate, once Lactantius has laid down the
stringent requirement that only those 'educated by God with instruction
from heaven’ can be truly just and wise. 164 He does lower his guard once to
concede that the apparently secondary virtues of tides, temperantia, probitas
and integritas can exist without justice. Old Romans, then, were not necess¬
arily completely without virtue. But heroes such as M uciusand Reguluslost

160 1.22.1-4.

161 5.10.15-18.

162 6.9.4-S; cf. 5.6.3.

163 See Fredouille (1978). See, however, 7.15.15, where Lactantius, following Seneca,
presents a brief overview of the secular history of Rome in terms of its progress from infancy to
old age.

164 6.6.28.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

out in the comparison with Christian martyrs. As for Cato the younger, he
was as wise as any Roman could be (Romanae sapientiae princeps), but is
singled out for censure for his suicide, which is categorised as a foolish act
of self-assassination. 165

Politics gets short shrift from Lactantius. Still, from a few remarks that
he makes in passing it seems that he was a republican in sympathy. In
particular, there is the striking introduction of Pompey in heroic guise as an
enemy of tyranny:

Everyone knows, I take it, how often the losers are the better and thejuster
party. That is why communities have always been subject to vicious tyran¬
nies. All history is full of examples, but we will be content with one. Pompey
the Great set out to be defender of the good, since he took up arms on behalf
of the republic, the senate and liberty. But he was conquered, and fell with
liberty itself, and was left headless and graveless by Egyptian eunuchs. 166

Pompey’s opponentj ulius Caesar receives a damning indictment as 'a man
utterly remote from political and personal justice, nevermind the justice of
heaven’. The deification of Caesar, through the agency of the 'criminal'
M ark Antony, was as scandalous as that of Romulus. 167 At least Caesar was
a man of clemency, who sought his country’s approval 'by the preservation
of two fine citizens of it, Cicero and Cato'. 168 Clemency is however the
virtue of a monarch.

There are few allusions to the Principate in Divine Institutes. 169 At one
point, when talking of the ages of Rome, Lactantius represents the 'rever¬
sion' of Rome to one-man rule after civil war as a return to infancy. This is
no compliment to monarchy. 170 Lactantius like everyone else would have

165 On the secondary virtues, see 5.14.10. For Roman exemplars see 5.13.13-15 (M ucius,
Regulus); cf. 6.6.26-27 (Fabricius, Cato, Laelius); 3.18.8-11; cf. Epit. 34.9 (Cato; cf. 3.19.8:
Cato and Catiline as moral opposites).

166 6.6.16-17. Cf. 7.15.16: Rome enters a second childhood with the loss of its liberty.
Lactantius may have got his line on Pompey and Caesar from Lucan, with whose epic on the
civil war he was familiar.

167 1.15.29.

168 3.18.12.

169 In his invocation of Constantine at 7.26.11-17, Lactantius compares him favourably
with the'good'emperors of the Principate. As patently an adjustment to the original text and an
ex post facto judgement, this is more properly dealt with in a later section, along with the
references to emperors of the Principate in De M ort. Pers.. See below, pp. 48-51.

170 7.15.16. He goes on to say that decline into old age inevitably followed the loss of the
‘freedom' that B rutus had defended, duce et auctore. Being unable to sustain themselves, the
Romans had to be propped up by ‘rulers'.

INTRODUCTION

taken the monarchical form of government for granted. Virtually from the
start of the Principate there was no practical alternative to the rule of an
emperor, unless it was the rule of two or more emperors. In placesin Books
1 and 2 where he is arguing for the necessity of monotheism he might appear
to be expressing a preference for one-man rule - but this may be merely a
thinly disguised attack on theTetrarchs. In any case, no special plea is made
for the superiority of monarchy as a constitutional form, and the elaborate
comparison of monotheism and monarchy that wefind in Eusebius is lack¬
ing in Lactantius. 171 It is likely enough that Lactantius favoured emperors
who had been (relatively) respectful of their upper-class subjects, that is,
'good' emperors of the Principate such as Augustus and M arcus Aurelius,
over the more authoritarian emperors of the late third century and early
fourth, but he does not advance their cause in Divine Institutes. 172 In any
case, a good emperor for Lactantius is above all one who leaves Christians
undisturbed. Again, if he thought, like Eusebius, that the birth of Christ in
the reign of A ugustus was providential, he kept it to himself. 173

Rome under the Tetrarchs

Divine Institutes should be read as a product of and witness to the Great
Persecution, and not as a response to the turnabout in the Church’s fortunes
that happened under Constantine. Lactantius, of course, lived on into the
reign of Constantine. This is reflected in the dedication to Constantine and
the several invocations of his name that occur in certain manuscripts, but in
little else that is of significance for our purposes. 174 I therefore postpone
discussion of those passages until the next section.

in On the Deaths of the Persecutors (De mortibus persecutorum) Lac¬
tantius offers a detailed account of the evolution of theTetrarchy, relations
between theTetrarchs and the progress of the persecution. Divine Institutes
contains nothing likethis. Itdoes, however, deal in pointed topical allusions.

171 F or a di ff erent approach, treati ng together the responses to C onstanti ne of E usebi us and
Lactantius, seeYoung (2000), 650-57.

172 For another point of view, see Digeser (2000).

173 An opportunity was missed at 4.8.1, concerning the second birth of Christ. In Epit. 38.2,
Christ's birth in the flesh is dated (but only that) to the reign of Augustus (in carne ex homine
Augusto imperante). For Eusebius' position, see Dem. Ev. 3.7.30-35; Prep. Ev. 1.4.1-6; H ist.
Eccl. 4.26.7-11 (citing M elito, bishop of Sardis); with Inglebert (1996), 164-68.

174 Alongside the invocations of Constantine, two allegedly dualistic passages are norm¬
ally seen as late additions. But see n. 106, above.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Among the many pagan gods that are pilloried, Jupiter and Hercules are
singled out for attack. 175 Their most conspicuous proteges in the author’s
day were Diocletian and his co-Augustus M aximian, who assumed the names
lovius and Herculius respectively. A contemporary panegyricist credited
them with bringing back the Golden Age: 'The Golden Age which existed
long ago when Saturn ruled [though not for a very long time] is now reborn
under the eternal auspices of J upiterand Hercules.’ 176 Lactantius, as wesaw,
blames J upiter for destroying the Golden Age. Far from seeking refuge with
Jupiter, as the poets would have us believe, justice was a refugee from
J upiter. In On the Deaths of the Persecutors Lactantius paints a picture of
misery and decline in the countryside under theTetrarchs that is sharply at
variance with his vision of plenitude and peace in the Golden Age of the
Second Coming. 177 In general, Lactantius represented the rule of D iocletian-
J upiter and his colleagues as every bit as evil as the inaugural post-Golden
A ge regime of J upiter. 178 His hostility to their regime dominates his thinking
in Divine Institutions. He is totally engrossed in the struggle of the
persecuted Church with a state whose values, he is persuaded, are topsy¬
turvy. At one point in Book 5 179 he cites Furius in Cicero’s Republic, who is
pressing the argument against justice advanced by theAthenian Academic
philosopher Carneades during his famous visit to Rome in the mid-second
century BC. Furius imagines a community that has gone off the rails,
treating just men as wicked and wicked men as just. In such a situation, he
asserts, only a madman would prefer the lot of the just man, 'harassed and
seized, his hands cut off, his eyes put out, he himself condemned,
imprisoned, branded, cast out, impoverished’. Lactantius goes on to refute
Furius’ prediction that the just and wise man would prefer to be bad and
prosperous than good and miserable, but his first concern is to assert the
applicability of Furius’ paradigm to his own day:

175 As noticed long ago by Baynes (1944), 136. See Nicholson (1984a).

176 Pan. Lat. 9(4)18.5. According to Piccaluga (1996), the main function of Golden Age
myth in the context of pagan Rome was the flattery of reigning emperors, whether we are
tal ki ng of the Tetrarchs or A ugustus.

177 M ort. pers. 7.3:'... with farmers' resources exhausted by the enormous size of the requi¬
sitions, fields became deserted and cultivated land was turned into forest'; cf. D .1.7.24.7-8. For
the later Christian writer Orosius, the prosperity of the period of theTetrarchs is a problem
requiring special attention and explanation: c. Pag. 7.26.5ff.

178 5.5.10-11 (Jupiter's actions provide a model for the Great Persecution); cf. 4.18.2
(persecution of Christ provides another model).

179 5.12.5ff.

INTRODUCTION

When he proposed hismodel, Furiusmust have guessed what evilswould be
coming upon us, and how, because of justice. This is what our people suffer,
all of it due to the wickedness of people confused. FI ere is our country, or
rather, the whole wide world, in such a state of confusion that it persecutes
good and just men, and does so as if they were evil and impious, torturing,
condemning and killing them. 180

The public authorities are applying the laws, to be sure, but those laws are
utterly perverse. Lactantius cites the imperial rescripts against Christians
assembled by the eminent jurist of the early third century Domitius (U Ipianus)
in his treatise On the Duties of a Proconsul, at a time when Christians were
yet to face a major persecution, in Lactantius’ day judges everywhere (it is
implied) were employing U Ipian’s collection of rescripts as a weapon against
the worshippers of God. These people 'call it law when elderly tyrants turn
butcher and go rabid against the innocent'. 181

Lactantius’ thinking on political matters does not extend much further
than this, though there is one possible exception to which we will come in a
moment. There is no doctrineof citizenship, no ethic of participation, and in
general an absence of constructive political thought. It is as if he envisages
two alternatives, and no more, for the human race: the rule of injustice where
crooked human law is administered and executed crookedly, or the rule of
justice, where divine law prevails, rendering laws, prisons and punishments
redundant. 182 Lactantius has not faced up to the challenge of sketching out
the appropriate acts and attitudes of Christians in a state which is not bent on
persecuting them. What we get instead is a radical criticism of central aspects
of the traditional Roman way of life including war, empire, social inequality
and the legal system - not to mention the cult of the gods, which is seen as
the prime source of the evil permeating the public realm. The author’s
mi 11 enariani st tendencies, visibleaboveall in the final book of Divine Insti¬
tutes, and his experience of the Great Persecution, provoked him into
voicing radical views against the political and legal establishment. 183

180 5.12.7-8.

181 5.11.18-19; 12.1. In 6.12.21 Lactantius gives us a glimpse of how good judges (those
who were applying the divine law) might interpret their responsibilities: 'A work of justice no
less important is that of guarding and defending children and widows who are destitute and in
need of aid. This is a universal prescription of divine law, since all good judges reckon it part of
their duty to help such people and to try to do them good, from natural humanity.'

182 5.8.8-9. For Christ as the living law', see 4.25.

183 Lactantian apocalyptic is a synthesis of a variety of traditions, Jewish, Iranian and
Christian. See especially Windisch (1929), Cumont(1931), Bidez and Cumont(1938), Danielou

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Tucked away in a digression in Book 5 is a call for religious toleration
and the use of persuasion rather than force in matters of religion. 184 This was
not the first time such opinions were expressed. TertulIian had briefly
asserted the 'liberty of religion' (libertas religionis) and coined the phrase.
Lactantius’ plea for religious freedom, however, is the most elaborate and
eloquent of its kind surviving from antiquity. W here did it come from? The
argument is rooted in his specifically Christian understanding of God’s
purpose in creation and his salvific strategy for fallen man. He skirts this
territory here, perhaps because he is purporting to be appealing to the
highest authorities for a change in policy, and sees it as impolitic (or simply
pointless) before such an audience to base his plea on overtly Christian
doctrine. The full case, drawing also on material located elsewhere in the
work, might be presented as follows:

Religion is, and should be, free and voluntary. 185 This was God’s own
prescription. 186 He created man to worship and honour him as father, 187 but
will not accept devotion that is forced or unwilling, holding it to be empty
and not deserving of his love in return: 'Since worship of God is an act of
heavenly service, it needs the maximum of devotion and loyalty. How will
God love a worshipper if the worshipper doesn’t love him?... ’ 188

The first man was free to sin if he wished, and unfortunately he used that
freedom to make the wrong choice. 189 A gain, God rejected the imposition of
religion by force when he came to earth as Christ. The very reason he came
asa man was to maintain man'sfreedom of choice. Christ came asateacher
to guide men towards the true religion. A consequence of this was that he
was constrained to carry out his own advice. He therefore had to battle
against evil, pursue virtue, in short, demonstrate by his own example that
man could conquer sin. 'Every individual on the receiving end of advice is

(1948), Hinnels (1973), Fabrega (1974), Rowland (1982), Charlesworth (1983-85), Nicholson
(1985), Daley (1991), Cohn (1993), Daley (1998), Frankfurter (1998), Hultgard (1998).

184 5.19.10-26; 20.5-11.

185 5.19.23: 'There is nothing that is so much a matter of willingness as religion.'

186 We may compareTertullian's bald statement that ‘It is ordained by both man-made and
natural law that each person may worship whatever he wishes', insofar as ‘natural law' is
identical withdivinelaw: Ad Scap. 2.2. Byman-madelaw,TertullianmayhaveinmindTrajan's
famous ruling that Christians were not to be hunted down (Pliny, Ep. 96-97), a ruling that was
countermanded by persecuting emperors, but after Tertullian's time.

187 7.5.1-5, 27; 7.6.1-2.

188 5.19.26.

189 This is implied in Lactantius’ version of the Fall as told in 2.12.

INTRODUCTION

reluctant to accept the need to obey it, rather as if his right to freedom were
being denied him.'A nd this attitude (says Lactantius) is entirely reasonable.
'It is an extraordinary desire of yours to want to impose laws on a free man
that you don't obey yourself.' 190 Christ’s strategy was to 'shame' rather than
'coerce' men into obeying him, 'and still leave them freedom'. This in turn
entitled him to reward the obedient who 'could have disobeyed had they
wanted', and punish the disobedient'because they could haveobeyed if they
wished’. 191

Now, however, we have a situation where men are denying the freedom
of religion laid down by God, and in the most ruthless and brutal manner.
Worse, it is precisely those who want to worship the true God who are being
subjected to violence and death. This is sacrilegious and polluting. 192 There
is another way, an alternative to the persecution of the innocent and just,
namely, rational argument: 'Let them come out into the open, pontiffs great
and lesser, flamens, augurs, kings of sacrifice, and all who are priests and
spokesmen of the cults, and let them invite us to a meeting and encourage us
to adopt cults of gods.' 193

Asithappens, bruteforce is not working. 'Worship of God increases the
more they try to suppress it.'The defence of religion by endurance and death
'is acceptableto God and adds authority to the religion'. Finally, God, as a
good general, will reward those who serve him well. 194 Conversely, he will
eventually exact revenge from those who hate him, and will cast them into
outer darkness. Even at the end, it seems, God will not compromise his
principles and compel the unwilling to believe.

it had always been open to a Christian spokesman to put together an
argument along these lines. Lactantius was the first to do it in style, having
taken over the baton from Tertul Man. It was persecution that forced it out of
him. Conversely, the changed position of the Church, the fact that it was
successively tolerated, favoured and established as the religion of the
empire, helps to explain the failure of later leaders of the Church to restate or
develop his arguments. One final thought: Lactantius argued that no one

190 4.23.3, 5, and in general.

191 4.24.7. See, briefly, Spanneut (1969) 146-47; Perrin (1981), 459-60.

192 Cf. 5.19.23: 'If you want to defend religion by bloodshed..., then at once it will not be
so defended: it will be polluted and outraged.’

193 5.19.10. There is no sign, and no likelihood, that the arguments that were made publicly
by the unknown philosopher and Hierocles on the eve of the Great Persecution were part of a
debate with Christians.

194 5.19.9, 24 and 25.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

should be forced to follow a particular religion; he might have made it even
more embarrassing for succeeding Christian spokesman had he put the case
(which he does not) for a community that was pluralistic and tolerant, in
which minority beliefs would not be repressed or disadvantaged by a
prevailing orthodox Christianity.

LastThoughts

Lactantius until his late middle age was a faithful servant of Rome, a prime
witness to the success of the Romans in spreading their culture and values
among the provincial elites of the West. Conversion to Christianity (and to a
brand of Christianity that eschewed political involvement and looked
instead to the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God), followed within a
short space of time by the shock of the Great Persecution, profoundly trans¬
formed his outlook and attitudes. The Lactantius on view in Divine Institutes
is in violent reaction against the Roman establishment and its value-system.
Of course, Lactantius as Christian convert had not lost contact altogether
with the Romanitas that had formed him and of which he had been a leading
representative. Above all, his deep attachment to the Classical literary tradi¬
tion shines through on every page of his written work. 195 It was thus in prin¬
ciple possible that, when a second revolution in his circumstances occurred
with the arrival of a Christian emperor on the throne and the duty imposed
on Lactantius by that emperor of educating his son, 196 he would seek ways of
reconciling traditional Roman values, which might be represented as having
been sidelined or overturned in the years of persecution, with those of the
newly evolving Christian state. What indications are there, then, that he
revised his attitude to politics and on the issue of the involvement of
Christians in public life?

There is, first, a modest lifting of the veil on the period of the Princi pate,
which he had passed over virtually without comment. In the invocation of
Constantine inserted into Book 7 (but notin the shorter, parallel passage in
Book 1), the emperor is said 'not just to equal but also, and most impor¬
tantly, to surpass the glory of emperors of old, even though by reputation

195 N ote too the many references, not all of them casual, to Roman institutions, especially
public administration, the civil law, the family and the army. See e.g. 2.16.7-8; 3.8.1; 4.3.15,
11.14; 6.4.17ff.; 7.7.25 (by implication favourable to the Roman empire).

196 See Nicholson (2001a), 184: ‘the earliest surviving Christian writer known to have been
involved in theworld of imperial politics'.

INTRODUCTION

they are counted among the good emperors’. Those emperors could not have
possessed more than 'a likeness of justice' because they did notknow God as
master of the universe. 197 Their shortcomings, in otherwords, are parallel to
those of the more admirable philosophers and statesmen of classical
antiquity - Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Cimon, Regulus and the like.

Traditionally, emperors were 'good' if the Roman aristocracy judged
them to be so, because they did not lord it over the senate but treated it with
relative respect. Lactantius might have made something of the senate's
endorsement of Constantine following his victorious entry into Rome in
312, as indeed he did in On the Deaths of the Persecutors, the triumphalist
tract written soon after the collapse of the persecution, and as Eusebius was
to do more elaborately in his Life of Constantine. 198 The absence of this
motif in the invocation to Constantine suggests that Lactantius’ historical
interests in Divine Institutes are still narrowly focused on religion - than
which, he was convinced, 'nothing matters more in human affairs'. 199 If
emperors were good, it was because they did not persecute Christians. This
doctrine was laid down unambiguously in On the Deaths of the Persecutors.
Nero and Domitian are there, predictably, singled out as enemies of the
Church. It is true that in the case of Domitian it is mentioned that once he
was dead the senate annulled his legislation and attacked his name. No
special reason is given for this, beyond the general characterisation of the
emperor as 'unpopular' and 'despotic', and Lactantius passes on to his real
interest, which is how Domitian's death affected the fortunes of Christianity:

The Church was not just restored to its previous state, it shone out with far
more brilliance and success than before; and in the period that followed,
when many good emperors guided and controlled the Roman empire, the
Church suffered no attacks from her enemies while it extended its hands
both to East and to West ... 200

197 Mort. pers. 2-3; D.l. 7.26.lOe, pp. 668-69 Brandt. Augustine too bypassed the
Principate in City of God. See I nglebert (1996), 445-48.

198 Eusebius, Vita Const. 39-41; Lactantius, Mort. pers. 44.10-12. Otherwise in this latter
work the senate is noticed only at 3.3ff. (see below). See Nicholson (2001b), 180ff., for the re¬
use of old imperial portraits by Constantine, 'which might suggest an association with the
"good emperors" of the past'. It would be too much to suggest that Lactantius was alluding to
this practice in his invocation to Constantine.

199 5.19.21.

200 Mort. pers. 3.4-5. At 1.7 in a programmatic note, Lactantius announces that his aim in
the work is 'to explain from the beginning, since the Church's foundation, who were its
persecutors and with what penalties the severity of the heavenly J udge punished them.'

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

In general, the invocations to Constantine are empty of the political theo¬
logy produced by Eusebius in his Christian version of Neopythagorean
kingship theory. 201 What Lactantiusfurnishes is bare-bones panegyric: you
are special, Constantine, you are the first emperor, the only emperor, to
acknowledge the true God (thereby showing your superiority over 'good'
emperors of the past). God is behind your success; with divine aid you have
brought justice back to the world. M ay God continue to support you, as you
protect the realm and punish the remaining enemies of religion.

The invocations to Constantineincludeno practical policy recommenda¬
tions, beyond the advice, which Constantine hardly needed, to mop up the
pockets of resistance to his rule and to the rehabilitation of the Church. The
call for religious toleration is not restated; noristhereany indication that the
original plea in Book 5, which was clearly aimed at the persecuting govern¬
ment of theTetrarchs, was rewritten as a piece of advice for the new regime.
Lactantius in his last years will have witnessed some at least of the govern¬
ment’s actions against schism, heresy and paganism. 'This was notan era of
tolerance, it was a time of revolution and conversion.’ 202

The Epitome to the Divine Institutes, composed around 320, is an obvious
place in which to look for afterthoughts and adjustments. One catches the
eye. M ilitary service has been dropped from the catalogue of examples of
unlawful killing, to be replaced by suicide, condemned as murder elsewhere
in Divine Institutes. Constantine for much of his reign was heavily engaged
in military activities, some of which at least L actantius would probably have
applauded, such as the war against Licinius who had renewed the policy of
persecution of Christians in the East. 203

Then again, in the I ate treatise On Anger, Lactantius seems to betaking a
more constructive line on the duties of the judiciary: in Divine Institutes
judges are merely the executors of injustice, and Christians are advised to
stay away from the courts, leaving it to God to exercise judgement. 204 In one
extended passage in On Anger, the following argument is presented, here
summarised: it would be quite wrong to label all punishment as evil and

201 See Centrone (2000), 567-74 (Neopythagoreans); Inglebert (1996), 153-75 (Eusebius).

202 Nicholson (2001a), 184. Eusebius records these events with enthusiasm. See Vita Const.
3.63-6; 4.23-5; with Cameron and Hall (1999), ad loc; Barnes (1981), 54-61(persecution of
Donatists).

203 Epit. 59.3; cf. D .1. 3.18.5. Lactantius’ penchant for metaphors from the army and war¬
fare, and in particular the extraordinary military imagery of his eschatology, already suggests a
tension in D.l.

204 6.18.

INTRODUCTION

malicious, for that would be tantamount to condemning as immoral laws that
penalise criminals and judges who execute the laws and inflict capital
punishment. Rather, the law is just that lays down for the offender the penalty
that he merits, and the judge is good and upright who punishes crimes,
because he protects the good in punishing the evil. The judge in this respect
is like the head of household (paterfamilias), and indeed God. In one
respect, however, the judge's position is different. God and a head of
household are fully entitled to feel anger at the offences of those under their
authority, but a judge is not. For he is merely a servant of the laws which he
has not himself formed. M oreover, he has not himself witnessed the crime,
and may even be dealing with someone who is innocent. 205

Given time, Lactantius might have changed his position significantly on
politics, citizenship, law and war. He certainly takes a hard line in On Anger
against sinners and rebellious sons. The aim of that treatise is to argue,
against various philosophical and religious positions, that God is justified in
feeling angry at the sinful and wicked, and should in fact do so. As God, so
his servants on earth, in the matter of the responsibility of judges and its
limits, as with divine anger, Augustine's views happen to be very close to
those of Lactantius. 206

& CONCLUSION

Lactantius was a famous teacher of Latin rhetoric who in late middle age
discovered Christianity and used the skills he had perfected in the school¬
room to defend it in its darkest hours. There had been numerous earlier
apologies for Christianity, but Divine Institutes was different, in two main
ways. First, it makes extensive use of authorities that were pagan, or had a
pagan past (the Sibylline Oracles), and was correspondingly sparing in its
citation of Scripture. Secondly, it combined an attack on pagan religion and
a comprehensive (if summary) account of the Christian faith. This was a
calculated attempt to break down the barrier between Christianity and the
educated classes of the Roman empire. With this end in view, Lactantius
tapped into the Classical literary and philosophical literature, enlisting as
unwitting allies writers such as Cicero, Seneca, Vergil and Terence, in an
even bolder move, he used selective quotation from the Hermetic and

205 De ira esp. 17-18.

206 See e.g. Augustine, civ. 10.6; 1.21; 19.6; Mainz 54, in Dolbeau (1996), 269ff. See
M icka (1943) for the opposi ng positions on divi ne anger of A rnobi us and L actanti us. W ho knows,
Lactantius might have gone on to develop views on just wars similar to those of Augustine.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

oracular literature, which (as he saw it) gave access to the earliest era of
mankind's presence in the world, at a time when (he was persuaded) God
was universally worshipped, to press the case for the fact of monotheism and
the truth of Christianity. Having thus gone halfway to meet his target
audience, he set before them a thinking man’s faith, a religio that was the
embodiment of sapientia. Christianity, he argued, gives access to the one
true source of wisdom, unlike philosophy, with its umpteen conflicting
theories and opinions, and unlike also the 'spokesmen of the cults', who
seem quite unable to 'come out into the open’ and argue the case for poly¬
theism, its origins, 'the source and the system', the' profit'and the' penalty'
for those who accept or reject it, with the aid of 'proofs from heaven'. 207

Christianity in contrast affords an entree to the knowledge of the nature
of God, his reasons for creating man, man’s essence, destiny and obliga¬
tions. Forman has definite, prescribed responsibilities that have to bemetif
he is achieve his designated end, eternal life, which is the highest good. For
this purpose he must be equipped with thefull armoury of virtues, in thefirst
i nstance j ustice, at once the pri me vi rtue and the sum of the vi rtues. We have
here entered the sphere of ethics, flagged by Lactantius as the only depart¬
ment of philosophy worth involving oneself in, as alone concerned with
human happiness. It is in this area that Lactantius makes his mark as pioneer
and prophet. If his singular contribution as the first major Christian moral
philosopher has gone more or less unnoticed, the reason lies in the shadows
cast by the great Christian theologians of the late fourth and early fifth
centuries.

An investigation of man’s response to God takes one to the heart of
justice. Taking the classical definition of justice as 'giving that which is
due', Lactantius shows that there is, and always has been, a missing dimen¬
sion: God has not received hisdue. One part of justice therefore is pietas, the
honouring and worshipping of the creator and father of mankind. The other
component of justice, hardly separable from pietas in his view, isaequitas,
fairness, which is identified with the New Testament doctrine of loving your
neighbour. A (typically) loosely structured argument leaves room for several
striking cameos such as the Carneades debate, the attack on the social
inequalities of ancient societies Greek and Roman, and the comparison of
Christian and pagan giving. Arresting subsidiary themes include the neces¬
sary coexistence and interdependence of good and evil, the superiority of
persuasion and debate over coercion in matters of religion, and the positive

207 5.19.10.

INTRODUCTION

value of the emotions and passions. It is while treating the sense of sight and
the feelings that it provokes that he launches his remarkable onslaught on
killing in all its forms, including soldiering, bringing a capital charge and
exposing unwanted babies.

The lengthy discussion of justice and the other virtues contains no
instruction about duties to the fatherland, no doctrine of public service.
Virtues that were predominantly public and civic in Cicero are private and
religious in Lactantius. This is explicable enough in a spokesman for an
unlawful religion. Once Christians were stripped of their civil rights by the
Tetrarchs, participation in politics was of course completely out of the
question. The several edicts against the Christians, and the anti-Christian
measures of the political and legal authorities in general, gave Lactantius the
incentive (if he needed it) not only to deny the authority of the law as
presently embodied in the measures of the legal authorities, but also to press
the argument for the superiority of natural over civil law. This explains the
publicity he gives (unusually for a Christian author, indeed for any contem¬
porary writer) to Carneades’ notorious speeches for and against justice and
to the attempt of Cicero to resolve the issue in the lost Third Book of his
Republic. Lactantius shows, using Carneades as his spokesman, that civil
law is enacted and enforced in the selfish interests of a community and the
individuals. Hethen proceeds to prove, this time against Carneades (though
he would I ike to think that Carneades is secretly on his side), that natural law
is just but also wise.

it is to Augustine rather than to Lactantius that we must turn for the
wider implications of the biblical instruction to love and serve one's
neighbour, orforconstructivethinking aboutthedutiesof a Christian citizen
of the Roman empire. Lactantius’ thought is on the one hand utopian and on
the other destructive of established and traditional political and social values
(and these two strands in his thinking are necessarily interwoven). We
wonder how he might have set about picking up the pieces, if he had had the
time, energy and inclination. Lactantius had once been a loyal servant of
Rome, proud of the heights he had reached in his profession and of his
achievement in launching the careers of a generation of leaders of North
African and Roman society. Conversion to Christianity, closely followed by
a punishing persecution, radicalised him and led him to write off the
establishment and its system of values. Even so, there are glimpses of the old
Lactantius in Divine Institutes, in his conspicuous attachment to the Classical
literary tradition, his willingness to bring Roman law into play where it
aided his argument, his acceptance of economic inequality, and his strong

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

sense of the need for discipline in the household. And as we saw, there are
some hints in his post-persecution writing that he was beginning to adjust his
thinking. The indications are few, and we should not assume that his second
thoughts would have been universally constructive. Would he have argued so
strongly, or at all, for religious toleration in his contemplated worksonjews
and on heretics? In any case, we have to work with what we have, and that is
a Christian thinker trapped in the thought world of the pre-Constantinian
era, and a singular work, which is at once a passionate, witty and sustained
defence of his new-found faith, and an intelligent and individual interpre¬
tation of the religious history of man, the mission and teaching of Christ, and
Christian precepts for living.

LACTANTIUS

DIVINE INSTITUTES

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

Aims and methods

Llln the days when men of outstanding ability made a serious commitment
to learning, they dropped every activity both public and private and devoted
all the effort they could spend on it to the search for truth. They thought it far
more glorious to investigate and understand the essence of things human and
divine than to concentrate on piling up wealth and accumulating honours.
2 Those are fragile and earthly aims, and concern only the physical self, and
so they cannot make anyone a more honest or a more just person. 3 These
men certainly deserved their acquaintance with truth: their desire to know it
was so strong that they wanted to put it before all else; 4 some abandoned all
they had and renounced every pleasure, as is agreed, in order to strip them¬
selves bare and follow virtue pure and simple. 1 The very word virtue and the
power of it had so much weight with them that in their judgment it contained
in itself the prize of the supreme good.

5 But they did not achieve their desire; they wasted their effort along
with their energy, because truth (which is a secret of God most high, the
creator of all things) cannot be grasped by the intelligence and the senses
that serve it: there would otherwise be no difference between God and man
if the planning and thinking of God's eternal greatness could be attained by
human thought. 6 As it is impossible for divinethinking to become known to
man by his own efforts, so God has not allowed man in his search for the
light of wisdom to go astray any longer, wandering in inescapable darkness
with nothing to show for his toil: eventually he opened man's eyes and made
him a gift of the acquisition of truth, first to demonstrate that human wisdom
is non-existent, and then to show the errant wanderer the path to immortality.

7 Few take advantage of this bountiful gift from heaven; the truth is
wrapped in obscurity. Learned men despise it since it lacks suitable cham¬
pions while the ignorant hate it because of its natural austerity, something
that human nature, prone to vice, cannot bear. In all the virtues there is an
admixture of bitterness, whereas the vices are spiced with pleasure, and so

1 L. probably has Democritus in mind (cf. 3.23.4); seeCic. Fin. 5.87, and note on 2.2 below.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

people are put off by the one and beguiled by the other, and they plunge
headlong into the embrace of evil rather than good because they are misled
by a phantom of good. In this confusion I am sure that help is needed if the
learned are to be directed towards true wisdom and the ignorant towards true
religion, 8 and this is a much better calling, more useful and more worth
boasting of, than the profession of rhetoric, in which we spent so long
training young people not to be good but to be cleverly bad. We shall do
much better now to discuss the precepts of heaven, which we can use to aim
people's minds towards the worship of the true greatness; 9 offering know¬
ledge of eloquence does not deserve as well of mankind as teaching the life
of duty and innocence. That is why in Greece philosophers were held in
greater esteem than orators: philosophers were reckoned to be teachers of
how to live well, and that is a much more distinguished business, because
speaking well concernsfew, butliving well concerns everyone. 10 Neverthe¬
less, the practice of pleading imaginary cases has helped me considerably: I
can now use my plentiful command of rhetoric to plead the cause of truth to
its end. Though truth can be defended, as many often have defended it,
without eloquence, nevertheless it ought to be i11umi nated and indeed main¬
tained with clarity and splendour of utterance, so that itfloods into people's
minds more forcefully, with the equipment of its own power and religion and
its own brilliance of rhetoric. It is upon religion and things divine, therefore,
that our argument will focus.

11 Some of the greatest orators, veterans of their art, have emerged from
their life’s work of pleading to turn in the end to philosophy, 2 convinced it
was the truest relief from toil that they could have: if torment of mind was all
they got in searching for what could not be found (peace of mind seems not
in fact to have been the aim of their search so much as trouble, and a much
more irksome trouble than they were in to start with), then I shall be all the
more right to aim for that haven of total sureness which is wisdom, the
wisdom that is pious, trueand of God, in which everything is readily uttered,
sweet to hear, easy to grasp and honourable to do. 12 And if certain people
who are professional experts in fairness have published Institutes of Civil
Law for the settlement of lawsuits and quarrels between citizensin dispute,
then we shall be all the more right to publish the Institutes of God, in which

2 L. is no doubt thinking of Cicero. Cicero's public career was effectively ended by the civil
war and Caesar's brief supremacy (apart from the abortive attempt to have M ark Antony
declared a public enemy in 44-43 BC). M ostof his philosophical work was composed in 45-43
BC.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

we shal I not be discussi ng gutters or water-theft or common affray, 3 but hope
and life, salvation and immortality, and God, for the eternal settlement of
superstition and error, which are foul and lethal.

13 This work I now commence under the auspices of your name,
Constantine, emperor most great: 4 you were the first of Roman emperors to
repudiate falsehood and first to know and honour the greatness of the one
trueGod. Ever since that day, the happiest to dawn upon the earth, when God
most high raised you to the blessed peak of power, you inaugurated a reign
that all desired for their salvation, and you began it outstandingly when you
made amends for the abominable crime of others and brought back justice
from her overthrow and exile. 14 For this, God will grant you happiness,
virtue and long life, so that in your old age you may still keep the helm of
state with the justice that you began with in your youth, and hand on the
guardianship of the name of Rome to your children as you received it from
your father. 5 15 The wicked who still persecute the good in other parts of the
world will pay full measure for their evil to the almighty one, and the later
they do so, the fiercer the payment, because just as he is a most indulgent
father to the pious, so he is a harsh judge of the impious. 16 In my desire to
protect his faith and divine worship, whom should I sooner appeal to, whom
sooner address, than him through whom justice and wisdom have been
restored on earth?

17 Let us therefore leave to one side the inventors of this earth-based
philosophy, who have nothing secure to offer, and go for the straight path.
If I thought that they were sufficiently sound as guides to good living, I
would both follow them myself and encourage others to do so. 18 But since
they disagree violently with each other, and often with themselves, their
route is plainly not a straight one at all; they have each followed the path of
their own liking, leaving a great confusion for those who seek the truth.
19 We, however, who have received the sacrament of true religion have the
truth by divine revelation, and we follow God as the teacher of wisdom and
theguideto virtue: we therefore invite all peopleto thefood of heaven with

3 L. is alluding to Cicero, Leg. 1.14, where the task of composing a treatise on universal
justice and law is contrasted with that of writing on the law of ‘gutters and housewalls', and
other such humble matters.

4 For the invocations to Constantine see pp. 48-50.

5 Constantius was proclaimed Caesar with Galerius on 1 March 293, and Augustus, also
with Galerius, on 1 May 305, following the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian. His
responsibilities lay in the West. He died on 25 July 306, and was succeeded by his son
Constantine. He was supposedly sympathetic to Christianity.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

no distinction of age or sex; 20 there is no sweeter food for the soul than the
knowledge of truth. We have devoted seven volumes to asserting and
illuminating this truth; it could involve an almost endless, an infinite labour,
since anyone wanting to develop the discussion to the full would find such
lavish abundance of material that his volumes would have no number and
his flow of words no stop. 21 We, however, shall manage it all in short
form, because what we have to offer is clear and lucid (so much so, indeed,
that it is surprising people found the truth so difficult to see, especially
those with a reputation for intelligence), and our aim is anyway one of
instruction, of redirecting people from the error that entangles them on to a
straighter path.

22 If, as I hope, we achieve our purpose, then we can send them to the
source of learning in all its richness and full ness and they can slake the thirst
in their bellies and satisfy their ardour with great draughts of it; they will
find everything iseasy forthem, all ready to hand and obvious, provided that
in theiraim of learning the teaching of wisdom they never tire of reading and
listening. 23 M any cling stubbornly to vain superstitions and harden them¬
selves against plain truth; they do no favour to the religions they assert so
perversely and even less favour to themselves. They have the straight path,
and yet they go a roundabout, devious course, abandoning the obvious line
and tumbling over the edge; they shun the light, and collapse blind and
enfeebled in darkness. 24They need advice, to cease thefight against them¬
selves and to will their tardy release from long-standing error; if they
eventually come to see why they were born, they will do so anyway. 25 The
cause of wickedness is ignorance of self. If a man can learn the truth and so
sort out that ignorance, he will then know his life's purpose and how he
should be living. I can summarise this knowledge as follows: no religion
should be adopted without wisdom in it, and no wisdom should be accepted
without religion in it.

Providence

21 In taking up the task of illuminating the truth I have not thought it
necessary to start with the question which seems to be naturally first,
whether all things are in the care of a thoughtful providence, or have been
created or proceed by chance. 2 The latter theory was first set out by
Democritus, and Epicurus supported it. But Protagoras had called the gods
into doubt before that, and later Diagoras denied them altogether, and a
number of others thought they did not exist: the result of which was simply

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

the idea that providence did not exist. 6 The other philosophers, however, and
particularly all the Stoics, rebutted them with great vigour: the world could
not have been made without a divine intention and could not survive unless
governed by ultimate reason. 7

3 Even Cicero, despite his defence of the teaching of theAcademy, wrote
atlength on many occasionsof providenceastheguideof things, supporting
the arguments of the Stoics and adding a great number of new ones himself;
he does this in all his philosophical works, and particularly in de Natura
Deorum [N.D. 2.73-153]. 4 It was certainly no problem to disprove the lies
of the few, so mistaken in their thinking, by using the evidence of com¬
munities and peoples who on this one topic were in total accord. 5 No one,
however ignorant and savage, can lift his eyes to heaven and fail to see, for
all that he may notknow whose providence it is that controls al I that he sees,
that some providence is there, simply because of the size of it all and its
movement, its shape and stability, its use, beauty and system: anything con¬
structed with such wonderful reason must have been put in place by some
superior power of deliberation.

6 We certainly have no problem at all in developing this part of the
argument at length: but si nee it has been much debated among philosophers,
and since an adequate response to those who dismiss providence has clearly
been made by people of shrewdness and eloquence, and since also we shall
have to talk about the cleverness of divine providence here and there
throughout this project of ours, let us for the moment leave the question to
one side; it goes with the other questions in such a way that plainly none of
them can be discussed without providence coming into the discussion too.

Unity of the divine

3.1We must start our work then with the question that comes next, question
two: is the world governed by the power of one god or many? No intelligent

6 Democritus of A bdera (fl. mid to late 5th cent.) developed the theory of atomism begun by
Leucippus. Epicurus (341-271 BC) inherited the system from Democritus, and founded his
own school of philosophy. He taught hedonism, man's mortality and the indifference of the
gods to human affairs (L. picks out Epicureanism for special attack). Protagoras of Abdera (fl.
later 5th cent.) was a famous sophist and agnostic, prosecuted by the Athenians for impiety in
the 430s. Diagoras of Melos (fl. later 5th cent.) was a lyric poet and atheist, expelled from
Athens c. 415 for mocking the Eleusinian mysteries. See also L. de ira 9.

7 For the Stoic conceptof reason (logos, ratio), seeCic. N.D. 1.39: 'divine power resides in
reason and in the mind and intellect of universal nature' (Chrysippus); cf. D.L. 7.134: of the two
principles in the universe, ‘that which acts is the reason in it, i.e., god'.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

man who can do the sums would fail to see that there is only one, the God
who founded it all in the first place and who now controls it with the same
virtue with which he founded it.

2 W hat is the need for many gods to sustain the world’s governance? -
unless perhaps we are going to reckon that if there were more than one, each
would have a reduced strength and power 3 (as the pluralists do reckon), on
the grounds that if no one god could keep control of so great a mass without
the assistance of the rest, they would have to be feeble. But God who is
eternal mind is a being of perfect and consummate virtue simply in every
respect: 4 if that is true, then there must be one god only. Absolute power, or
absolute virtue, maintains its own strength; solidity is the quality of a thing
which cannot be reduced, and perfection of a thing which cannot be
extended. 5 A king who has command of the whole earth is beyond question
the most powerful king, as he should be, si nee everything everywhere is his,
and all resource from every source converges on him alone. 6 If the world
were to be shared between more than one king, then each will certainly have
a lesser portion of its wealth and strength, since each will abide within the
bounds of his allotted share. 7 In like fashion, if there were more than one
god, they will all have I ess power, si nee the others will have only so much for
themselves. Virtue in its perfection is sooner to be found in a totality than in
some small fraction of totality. If God is perfect, as he has to be, he cannot be
so unless he is one, so that everything can be within him. 8 The virtues and
powers of multiple gods must therefore be weak by comparison, because
each individual god will lack what the rest possess: the more there are of
them, the weaker they will be. 9 Nor can there even be division, not even
once, of that totality of overall power and of that divine energy: anything that
admits of division must also admit of death. If, however, death is far from
god because god is incorruptible and eternal, it follows that the power of god
cannot be divided.

10 God is therefore one, given that nothing else can exist with a power
equivalent to his. A nd yet those who think there are many gods say that the
divine functions are shared among them. We will argue all these issues in
their proper place; 11 for the moment I stay with something relevant here: if
there is a distribution of functions, we simply come back to the fact that no
one of the gods can manage all the functions alone, and one who cannot
control them all if the rest of the gods withdraw will not be perfect. In order
to rule the world, therefore, we have to have the perfect virtue of one rather
than the weakness of many. 12 It is a mistake to think that the world is too
bigto be controlled by one: it involves a failure to understand how great the

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

power and energy of divine supremacy is; it means thinking that the one god
who had the capacity to make the world lacks the capacity to control the
world he has made. 13 If people could imagine the immensity of this divine
work, and that though there was nothing there to begin with, yet it was
forged from nothing by the virtue and vision of God - the work could not
have been started and finished except by one and only one - then they will
understand that it is much easier for something established by one to be
controlled by one.

14 Someone may perhaps say that so great a work as the world could not
even have been constructed except by more than one. However many makers
he proposes, and however great he makes them, and whatever size and
capacity, virtue and power he puts in all his gods, I attribute the whole thing
to one God, and I say that its very existence is in him alone; thus the quantum
of all the attributes in him will be beyond imagination and expression. 15 We
lack both understanding and language for this because the human mind
cannot cope with such a blaze of understanding nor the human tongue with
its description: yet it is our duty to understand and to describe exactly that.

16 I realisewhat could be said in response, that the qualities we wantfor
our one god are there in the many. But this is completely impossible,
because the power of each one of them will not have the capacity to operate
across the boundaries of the powers of the others where they clash. Each one
must either be incapable of going outside its own limits or, if it does, must
drive the other god from the territory. 17 Pluralists fail to see that it is
possible for a multiplicity of gods to want different things, which leads to
dispute and contest among them: hence Homer's fiction of gods at war with
each other, some wanting Troy to be captured and others resisting. 18 Decisions
about the world must therefore be made by one. If power over all the
individual parts were not referable to one providence, the whole will not be
ableto abide as one; each individual god will careforno more than matters
to him, as happens even in war withouta unified strategic command. 19 If an
army had as many commanders as it has legions and cohorts, wedges and
wings, first it will be impossible to construct a line of battle if any one unit
shirks the danger, nor will control and deployment be easy because they will
all adopt their own plans, and the differences will do more harm than good.
So it is with command of the world: if there were not to be one and only one
to whom the care of the whole can be referred, it will all break up and
collapse together. 20 To say that the world works by a mass vote is like
asserting there are many minds in one body because there are many
functions in the different limbs, so that people believe that one mind governs

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

each physical sensation, and the same goes for the emotions, those agents of
our wrath or lust, our joy, fear or pity: people think there are separate minds
at work in all of them too. If anyone were really to say that, plainly he
wouldn't even have the one mind he does possess! 21 If, however, one mind
does have the government of so much in one body, and if it does attend to
everything at once, how could anyone think that the world could not be
controlled by one, but could be controlled by more than one?

Those who argue for gods understand the point: they say that their many
gods are in charge of individual areas, but in such a way that there is one
overlord. 22 In that case the rest of them will not be gods, but subsidiaries and
servants, 8 and the overlord, controlling everything, will put them in their posts
and they will comply with his commands and wishes. If they are not all equal
together, then they are not all gods: slave and master cannot be the same. 23 If
god is the name of supreme power, he has to be incorruptible, perfect, the
victim of no feelings and inferior to nothing. Those forced of necessity to
obey one supreme god are therefore not gods. 24 People who think that they
are, however, are not being fooled in vain, and we will soon reveal the cause
of their error. M eantime let us set up the evidence for a single divine power.

Testimony: the prophets

4.1The prophets, a rather numerous group, proclaim one god and speak of
one god; filled as they are with the inspiration of one god, they have
pronounced about the future with total unanimity. 2 Now, those who are
ignorant of the truth think the prophets should not be believed: they say their
voices were not divine but human; because their message concerns one god,
evidently they must have been either lunatics or cheats! 3 We by contrast can
see that their prophecies have been fulfilled, and are being fulfilled every
day, and the way their divinations converge on one and the same idea shows
that they were not mad. Who could be of disturbed mind and not only fore¬
tell the future but speak with one voice too? 4 So were they cheats? Nothing
could be more unlikely than an intent to deceive when they were saving
everyone from deception! That is why they were sent by God, to be heralds
of his supremacy and to correct human wickedness.

5 Besides, the desire to invent and lie is typical of peoplewho wantto be
rich and are looking for profit: these holy men were very far from that. 6 They

8 L.’s Latin, satellites ac ministri, is used frequently by Cicero in a sinister sense; see for
exampleAgr. 2.32.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

carried out their appointed duty in such fashion that they abandoned
everything needful for preserving life and stopped toiling for the future, or
even for the immediate day, content with the food that God supplied
impromptu. They got not just zero profit out of it, but torture and death as
well. 7 To men of vice and evil living, the precepts of justice taste bitter;
hence the great bitterness they put into the torture and murder of those who
tried to expose and prevent their wickedness. People with no urge for profit
had therefore neither desire nor reason to deceive. 8 Why, some of them
were princes or even kings, absolutely not people to be suspected of greed
and deception, and yet they proclaimed the one God with the same divining
power as the rest did. 9

Pagan writers: poets and philosophers

SlLet us put the testimony of the prophets to one side, however, in case
there is something unsatisfactory in a proof apparently dependent on sources
which are wholly unacceptable. 2 Let us come to the writers, and to prove
the truth letuscitein evidence people who are often used against us: I mean
the poets and philosophers. 10 We must prove the oneness of god from them,
not because they have a know I edge of the truth, but because the effect of the
actual truth is too strong for even a blind man not to see divine brightness
when it forces itself on his eyes.

3Though the poets havedevoted odes to the gods and haveglorified the
deeds of gods in paeans of praise, they are in frequent agreement that
everything is held together and guided by a single spirit or mind. 4 Orpheus,
oldest of the poets, and coeval with the gods (to go by the tradition that he
sailed with theArgonauts in the company of Castor, Pollux and Hercules),
calls the true and great God Gn 'first-born' because nothing was born before
him and everything is descended from him. He also calls him G 'Appeared,
because when there was still nothing in existence he came into being first
and existed out of infinity. 12 5 Because his nature and origin could not be
comprehended, Orpheus said that he was born from immeasurable air: G
'Shining first-born son of enormous air'. There was nothing greater he could

9 L. is certainly stretching a point; on the other hand, the term prophet was applied quite
widely by Christians, to include Abraham, M oses and David. SeeJ n 8:56; M k 12:35ff.; Acts
2:29ff.

10 See pp. 14-16,19 above.

11 G indicates that L. uses or quotes in Greek.

12 Orph. fr. 57 (Abel) = 73 (Kern).

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

say. 6 This is the one, he says, who is father of all the gods, and for their sake
he made heaven and looked about for his children to have a pi ace of common
dwelling: 6 'hefounded for the immortals an imperishable home’. 13 Guided
by nature and reason Orpheus realised that there was a pre-eminent power,
the power which made heaven and earth. 7 He could not say thatj upiterwas
the prince of it all, who was born of Saturn, nor Saturn either, who was said
to be born of heaven; and he did not dare set up heaven as a sort of first god,
because he could see it was a part of the universe and that it needed a creator
itself. This reasoning led him to the 'first-born' god, and to him he assigns
and grants primacy.

8 Homer could not have given us anything which would be relevant to
the truth: he wrote on a human rather than a divine level. Hesiod could,
however; he covered the begetting of the gods in one book's work. 14 And yet
he gave us nothing even so, because he took for his start not a founder god
but chaos, which is a confused mass of unformed, disordered stuff; he ought
instead to have clarified first where the chaos itself came from, and when,
and how it began to take shape. 9 After all, the stuff of chaos has to be
created by someone, just as everything is organised, arranged and effected
by some competent power. So who did make the stuff of chaos if not God, to
whose power all things are subject? 10 Hesiod retreats from that, however,
scared of a truth he does not know. He did not reel off that poem on
Helicon 15 at the prompting of the M uses, as he wanted people to think: he
had done his thinking and came prepared.

11 Among our Roman poets Vergil stands first for closeness to the truth;
for God most high, whom he calls 'mind' and 'spirit,' he has the following
verses [A. 6.724-27]: 'I n the beginning the sky and the lands and the liquid
levels, the gleaming globe of the moon and the Titan stars, were fed within
by a spirit; the whole mass was steeped through all its limbs, and its great
body was suffused, by mind.' 12To prevent ignorance of who that spiritwas
with so much power, he clarified it elsewhere [G. 4.221-24]: 'For god it is,
they say, who goes through all lands and tracts of the sea, through lofty sky;
he is the source of the slender life in every living thing, flocks, herds and
men, and every sort of wild animal.’

13 Ovid too, at the start of his famous poem, acknowledges without any
verbal subterfuge that the world was made by god, calling him 'craftsman of
the world’ and 'workman of it all ’ [M et. 1.57, 79], 14 If only Orpheus or our

13 Orph. fr. 75 (Abel) =89 (Kern).

14 Hesiod, Theogonia.

15 Hesiod, Theogonia 1-8.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

two Roman poets had persisted in standing by what nature led them to feel,
they would have understood the truth and would have grasped the doctrine
that we accept.

15 Enough of the poets. Let us come to the philosophers, whose impact
is more authoritative and whose judgment is more sure, because people trust
them to have pursued the search for truth rather than fiction. 16 Thales of
M iletus, one of the Seven Sages, 16 is said to have been the first to investigate
causation in nature: he declared that water is what everything is born from,
and that god was the mind which turned water into everything else. Thus he
based the substance of thi ngs i n water w hi I e he establ ished the basic cause of
generation in god. 17 Pythagoras defined what god was as follows: it was a
spirit going to and fro, diffusing itself through every part of the world and
through all nature; all animals that are born take life from it. 18Anaxagoras
says that god is mind without limit, self-moving. A ntisthenes says that there
are popularly many gods, but only one in nature, the creator of the whole
universe. 19 Cleanthes and Anaximenes say that aether 17 is supreme god,
and our poet is in accord with that view [Verg. G. 2.325-27]: 'Then the
omnipotent father comes down as aether in fruitful showers to the lap of his
joyful wife, mingling his greatness in her great body and nurturing all her
offspring.’ 20 Chrysippus says god is the force of nature equipped with
divine reason; sometimes he cal Is god divine necessity. Similarly Zeno calls
god law natural and law divine. 18

16 The Seven Sages flourished in the late 7th and early 6th centuries BC. They are first
listed in PI. Prt. 343a. M embership of the group varies; four seem to be constant, Thales of
M iletus, Solon of Athens, Pittacus of M ytilene and Bias of Priene, and two others are frequent,
Cleobulus of Lindos and Chilon of Sparta. They shared a reputation for practical and political
skills; hence the original inclusion of Periander tyrant of Corinth, for whom Plato substituted
M yson of Chen. L. owes most of 16-23 to Cic. N.D. 1.25-39.

17 The root of aether is the Greek verb to blaze; aer (whence air: root, to blow) was the
atmosphere next to the earth and aether the layer beyond in which the heavenly bodies had their
being.

18 Pythagoras of Samos, later of Croton, 6th cent, philosopher and forerunner of Plato, is an
obscure figure. He founded a philosophical and religious movement which was highly
influential in succeeding centuries. Anaxagoras of Ciazomenae (fl. mid 5th cent.), a physical
theorist, moved to Athens and was a friend of Pericles. He was prosecuted for impiety in the
430s. A ntisthenes (fl. late 5th cent.) was an associate of Socrates and a prolific writer. Critical of
conventional religion, he tended towards monotheism. Cleanthes (331-232 BC), Stoic
philosopher and poet, headed the Stoa from 262. Anaximenes of M iletus (fl. c. 546-525 BC)
was a physical theorist and a monist. Chrysippus (c. 280-c. 206 BC) was a leading Stoic
philosopher and head of the school from 232. Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC) was the founder of
Stoicism. For philosophers and monotheism seeAthanassiadi and Frede (1999).

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

21 The ideas of all these philosophers may be inconclusive but they do
point in the same direction in agreeing there is one providence. W hetheryou
call it nature or aether, reason or mind, the necessity of fate or divine law or
whatever, they are all the same as what is cal led God by us. The difference of
label is no problem, since in their meaning they all comeback to one and the
same thing. 22 Despite being at odds with himself in saying and thinking
things that contradict each other, A ristotle acknowledges in the end that the
world is in the charge of one mind. 23 Plato, considered the wisest of them
all, backs monarchy quite openly: he does not call god aether or reason or
nature, but god, as he is, and this perfect and wonderful world, he says, was
made by god. 19

24 Cicero follows him closely, acknowledging god’s existence in many
of his writings on many occasions: in the Laws [Leg. 1.22] he calls him
supreme; in the argument in de Natura Deorum he shows that the world is
governed by god as follows [N ,D. 2.77]: 'Nothing is more remarkable than
god. The world must therefore be governed by god. God is therefore not
obedient to or subject to any natural force. Therefore he controls all nature
himself.’ 25 He defines what god is in his Consol atio: 'God himself, the god
whom we understand, cannot be understood otherwise than as mind
untrammeled and free, distinct from all perishable accretion, perceiving all
things and setting them all in motion.' 20

26 Seneca too, who was the sharpest Stoic of all Romans, 21 time and
again gives god most high the praise he deserves. In his work On Premature
Death he says: 'Do you not comprehend the authority and supremacy of
your judge, that he is governor of the earth and sky and god of all gods, on
whom depend those powers which one by one we worship and adore?’ 22 2 7 So
too in his Exhortationes: 'W hen he was laying the first foundations of this
beautiful world, and when he was beginning this work of a size and quality
unknown to nature, god extended himself throughout its whole body;
nevertheless, so that every part of it should proceed under its own proper
guidance, he still created servants of his kingship.’ 23 28 He said a great deal

19 Cic. Ac. fr. 25.5 (Plasberg).

20 Part of a larger fragment cited in Cic. Tusc. 1.66 (=fr. 21 Vitelli, in part).

21 Acerrimus Stoicus; cf. 1.7.13, 2.8.23 and 6.24.14 (he could have been a Christian). L.
Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC-AD 65) was born in Cordoba in Spain, pursued a political career in
Rome and was forced to commit suicide by Nero.

22 Sen. F61,176 (Vottero).

23 Sen. F86a, 200 (Vottero).

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

more too on the subject of god similar to what we say, but I postpone it for
the moment because it comes better elsewhere.

It is enough for the moment to show that men of the greatest ability had
reached the truth and had almost grasped it, except that they were hauled
back by a deep-dyed habit of mistaken thinking: they supposed that other
gods existed as well, and they believed that the things God made for man to
use should themselves be thought of as gods and worshipped as gods as if
they were endowed with sense.

Divine testimony: Trismegistus and the Sibyls

dlLet us now pass to evidence from the gods. First, however, i will put
forward one item which is like divine evidence in two respects: it is exceed¬
ingly old, and the human being whom I shall name has been translated to the
gods.

2 In Cicero the pontifex C. Cotta is in dispute with the Stoics on the
subject of religions and the variety of ideas that there usually are about the
gods; in order, like a typical Academic, to keep things undecided, he says
[N.D. 3.56] that 'there are five M ercuries’ and, after listing four of them in a
row, that 'the fifth is the killer of Argus; that is why he fled to Egypt and
established laws and literature among the people there. 3 The Egyptians call
him Thoyth; from him the first month of their year’ (which is September)
'got its name.' Fie also founded a town, which in Greek is still called
M ercury's city, 24 and the people of Faenia 25 worship him devotedly. Though
he was a man, nevertheless he was so very old and so very learned in all
manner of scholarship that his knowledge of many facts and skills gave him
the extra name of Trismegistus. 26 4 Fie wrote books in great quantity which
are relevantto knowledge of thingsdivine; inthem he asserts the supremacy
of the one and only God most high, and calls him by the same titles that we
do, 'lord and father’. 27 And in case anyone should ask God's name, he said
that he was nameless, on the grounds that God needs no proper name
precisely because of his uniqueness. These are Trismegistus' words: 2 'God
is one, and what is one needs no name. Fie that is is nameless.’ 5 God there¬
fore has no 28 name because he is unique; a proper name is only needed when

24 Hermopolis, that is. Two are known, one in the Delta and one in theThebaid.

25 Faenia was in N .E. Arcadia (Paus. 8.14.6-15.4, there called Pheneos).

26 Trismegistos: Greek for thrice greatest. For HermesTrismegistus see pp. 16-17 above.

27 The first of many references in this work to God as dominus et pater.

28 Brandt's addition of the negative is accepted.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

a multitude of people needs to be distinguished, so that each individual can
be marked with his own distinctive appellation. Because god is unique, his
proper name is God. 29

6 It remains to present the much more reliable evidence from oracular
responses and sacred songs. Possibly our opponents think that poets are not
to be believed because they construct empty fictions, nor are philosophers
because they can makemistakes, being human themselves. 7 Even in Greece
no more learned man ever lived than M. Varro: 30 in his books on things
divine which he dedicated to J ulius Caesar, pontifex maximus, in speaking
of the quindecimvirs 31 he says that 32 'the Sibylline books were not the
product of onesingleSibyl but were given the one titl e S i by 11 i ne, because all
female prophets are called Sibyls by the ancients, either after the one Sibyl
of Delphi or from their delivery of god’s advice. 33 In Aeolic dialect gods are
called sioi, nottheoi, and advice is boulla, not boule: henceSibyl, meaning
god’s advice. 34 8 The Si by Is were ten in number (he listed them all, under the
writers who dealt with them individually); 'the first was from Persia, and is
mentioned by N icanor, who wrote a history of A lexander of M acedon; the
second was a Libyan, as recorded by Euripides in the prologue to his Lamia;
9 the third was from Delphi, and Chrysippus speaks of her in his book de
Divinatione; the fourth was a Cimmerian, in Italy, as named by Naevius in
his Punic War and by Piso in his Annales; the fifth was from Erythrae,
confirmed by Apollodorus of Erythrae as his own fellow-citizen, who
foretold to the Greeks as they set out for Ilium both the fall of Troy and
Homer’s fictions about it; the sixth was a Samian: Eratosthenes says he
found her discussed in some ancient Samian records; 35 10 the seventh was

29 NF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 3a. Cf. Exod. 3:13-15.

30 M . Terentius Varro (116-27 BC), exhaustive scholar, prolific writer, reported author of
75 different works, was used by Christian writers as an authority on classical religion and
philosophy.

31 The quindeci mui ri sacrisfaciundis were one of the four main colleges of Roman priests.
They were responsible for the Sibylline books, which were kept on the Capitol and consulted in
moments of crisis by order of the senate.

32 L. reports him first in indirect speech, then briefly in direct speech, and finally at length
in indirect speech. He is probably quoting from memory, as usual.

33 For the Sibylline Oracles see pp. 17-21 above.

34 This sort of etymology was long established; cf. Aesch. Ch. 949, where Dike, j ustice, is
derived from Dios kore, 'Zeus’ daughter'. But si os (for theos) is Laconian, not Aeolic, and
boulla would give -bul-, not -byl-. The Aeolic form of boule is bolla (the change of accent
appears to be right). It is unlikely that Sibyl is a Greek word at all.

35 N icanor was a friend of Aristotle and served with Alexander the Great. For Chrysippus
see n. 18. Naevius (fl. mid to late 3rd cent.) wrote a narrative poem on the First Carthaginian

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

from Cumae, and was called Amalthea (or by others Herophile, or
Demophile): she it was who brought the nine books to king Tarquinius
Priscus, demanding 300 philips for them, and he mocked the huge price and
I aughed at the woman's madness; i n the si ght of the ki ng she then burnt three
of them and asked the same price for the remainder; Tarquin thought the
woman madder still; 11 when she burnt three more and still stuck to her
price, the king was persuaded and bought the rest for 300 gold pieces. 36
Their number was later increased when the Capitol was rebuilt, because
books were gathered and broughtto Romefrom all communities of Italy and
Greece and especially from Erythrae, under the name of any Sibyl; 12 the
eighth, from the Hellespont, was born in Trojan territory in the village of
M armessus 37 near the town of Gergithium, and Heraclides of Pontus 38
writes of her that she belonged to the era of Solon and Cyrus; the ninth was
Phrygian, and she uttered atAncyra; the tenth wasfromTiburand was called
Albunea, and was worshipped as a goddess atTibur by the banks of the river
Anio, in whose waters an image of her is said to have been found, holding a
book in her hand. Her oracles were moved to the Capitol by the senate.’ 13 The
utterances of all these Sibyls are still rehearsed and kept, except for those of
the Sibyl of Cumae: her books are Roman state secrets and no one has the
right to see them except the quindecimviri. Each book is the book of an
individual Sibyl, but because they are all labelled Sibylline peoplethink that
they are all by one Sibyl, and the books have become confused; it is not
possible to distinguish them and to establish the authorship of each, except
fortheErythrean one; thatSibyl hasputhertruenamein the verse, saying in
her preface that she will be called Erythrean despite being born in Babylon.
14 Wetoo will say Sibyl indiscriminately, however, any time their evidence
is needed.

All these Sibyls, then, proclaim one god, but the Erythrean one does so
pre-eminently; she is considered more celebrated than the rest, and more
distinguished, inasmuch as Fenestella, a most careful author, in speaking of

War (264-241 BC). L. Calpurnius Piso, consul in 133 BC, was an annalistic historian. For
Apollodorus of Erythrae, cited elsewhere by L. himself (de ira 22) and by the scholiast on PI.
Phdr. 244b, seej acoby FGrH 3b 422. Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 285-194 BC) presided over
the library atAlexandria in succession to Apollonius of Rhodes. Versatile and learned, he wrote
inter alia on chronology, mathematics, geography and philosophy.

36 The story is told, but with much less detail, in D.H. 4.62 and in Zonaras 7.11.

37 Properly M arpessus; the error seems to be the author's.

38 Heraclides of Pontus, 4th cent, philosopher, studied in Plato'sAcademy with Speusippus
and Aristotle, and wrote extensively in dialogue form.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

the quindecimviri says that 'when the Capitol was restored, C. Curio the
consul proposed in the senate that a mission should go to Erythraeto obtain
the oracles of the Sibyl and bring them back to Rome; so P. Gabinius, M .
Otacilius and L. Valerius were sent, and they brought back to Rome about a
thousand verses which had been copied down by private individuals.' 39
Varro relates the same, as I said earlier. 15 The evidence for one god in the
verses that the mission brought to Rome is as follows: 2 'One god ruling
alone, supremely great, unbegotten.'ThisistheonesupremeGod who made
the heavens and marked them out with the heavenly bodies, for it con¬
tinues: 2 'God is one and single, utterly above all; he made the sky and sun
and stars and moon, and the fruitful earth and the swell of the water of the
sea.' 40 16 Since he is the sole constructor of the world and maker of the
thingswhich eitherconstituteitorexistin it, heisaloneto beworshipped, as
follows: 2 'Worship him who is the only governor of the world, who alone
was made from eternity and for eternity.’ 41 Another Sibyl (which one I do
not know), in saying that she conveyed the word of god to man, said: 2 'I am
the only god and there is no other.' 42

17 I might now proceed to the evidence of all the others, but these will
suffice here, and I will keep the rest for better moments. But since we are
defending the cause of truth before people who are astray from it in the
service of false religions, what sort of proof could we better use against them
than to rebut them with evidence from their own gods?

Apollo: objections answered

7.1A polio is seen as divine, and especially as oracular, more than all other
gods; when he spoke at Colophon (where he went from Delphi because, I
suppose, of the charm of Asia M inor), upon being asked who or what god
really was, he replied in twenty-one verses. Here are the first three: 2 'He is
self-born, untaught, unmothered, unaffectable, unnameable by any word,
dwelling in fire, god thus, and we his messengers are a little fraction of
him.’ 43 2 Can anyone imagine that said of J upiter? J upiter has both a mother

39 Fenestella, Ann. fr. 18* (Peter). A historian of the early principate (d. c. 35), he was used
by Pliny the Elder, and cited by L. in de ira 22.5-6. C. ScriboniusCurio was consul in 76 BC,
and the three men named were apparently quindecimuiri (there is a shorter notice in de ira 22).

40 Cf. Orac. Sib. 8.7 and 3.3-5.

41 Orac. Sib. 8.15ff., 17.

42 Cf.Orac.Sib.fr. 1,15-16.

43 Orac. Apoll. fr. 51, 223-5 (Fontenrose).

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

and a name. And what about the famous 'thrice greatest’ 44 M ercury, whom I
mentioned earlier? Does he not cal I god not only unmothered, as A polio says,
but also unfathered, because he has no origins anywhere at all? 45 3 It is impos¬
sible for the power that created all things of itself to be created by anyone.

That is sufficient demonstration by argument, I think, and sufficient
confirmation by evidence of a fact that is clear enough by itself, that the
world has one king, one father and one lord only. 4 Someone may possibly
ask of us the same question that Hortensius asked in Cicero: 46 'If god is one
and only one, what happiness can he have in his solitude?'We might as well
say that because he is unique he is on his own, solitary! W hy, he has servants,
whom we call messengers. 47 5 Seneca's phrase in his Exhortationes which I
noted earlier is also true, that 'god created servants of his kingship.’ 48 The
servants are not gods nor do they expect to be called gods or worshipped so,
since they do nothing contrary to the instructions and will of god. They are
anyway not the ones popularly worshipped, whose number is very limited
and known. 6 If those who worship gods think they are worshipping the
same creatures that we cal I servants of God most high, that is no reason why
they should get cross with us for saying there is one god and for denying
there are many. 7 If they like having many, we say there are not just twelve
of them, or three hundred and sixty-five, as Orpheus says, but that they are
countless. 49 We maintain that their error goes in the wrong direction if they
think the gods so few! They ought to know the proper appellation of their
gods, however, to avoid offending the true God: it is his name they usewhen
they apply it to their lot. 8 They should heed their Apollo: in the response
quoted, in denying J upiter pre-eminence he also denied the rest of them the
name of god. The third verse shows that servants of God should not be cal led
gods, but angels. 9 On the subject of himself Apollo has told a lie: though he
belongs among the demons, he has attached himself to the angels of God. In
other responses he admitted that he was a demon. W hen he was asked how
hewanted to be addressed in prayer, he answered as fol lows: 0 'All-wise, all-

44 L. uses the word termaximus, a Latinisation of trismegistos, just as he turns Hermes into
M ercury.

45 Cf. 4.8.4-5.

46 Cic. Hort. fr. 62 (Straume-Zimmermann). L. refers to a lost work of Cicero in which Q.
Hortensius Hortalus was the chief speaker. Hortensius (114-49 BC) was the leading orator of
the period until Cicero bested him in the trial of Verres in 70 BC.

47 Here L. uses nuntius as the translation of angelos used in 1 above. In 8 and 9 below he
transliterates the Greek into angelus.

48 Sen. F86a, 200 (Vottero).

49 Orph. fr. 4 (Abel) = pp. 225-26 (Kern).

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

learned, most variable demon, hear us'. When he was asked for a prayer for
Apollo Sminthius, he made a similar proposal starting as fol lows: G 'Harmony
of the world, light-bearer, all-wise spirit’. 10 What is left, then, except
surrender by his own admission to chastisement and eternal punishment
from the true god? For in another reply he said: G 'The demons who roam by
land and sea are subdued by the whip of the unwearying god.' 50

11 For the time being we can be content with the fact that in his desire to
glorify himself and take a place in heaven he has acknowledged the reality
about the proper naming of those who share God’s presence. 12 M ankind
should therefore retreat from its errors, discard its evil cults, and recognise
its lord and father: his excellence cannot be measured nor his greatness be
perceived nor his beginning be understood. When the human mind, with all
its capacity for focus and penetration, reaches as far as God, it halts, as if
every path were eroded and gone; it pauses and quails, and there is no further
progress it can make. 13 But because it is impossible for anything created 51
not to have started its existence at some time, it follows that because there
was nothing preceding him he himself was created by himself before
everything else, and that is why he is called G 'self-grown' by Apollo and G
'self-generated', 'unbegotten' and 'unmade' by the Sibyl. 52 That is what
Seneca in his shrewdness saw, in his Exhortationes. 'Our origins lie else¬
where,’ he said. 'Hence, we look towards someone whom we may credit with
what is best in us. We were produced and informed by someone else, whereas
God was created by God himself.' 53

G ods were born

&lThis then is the evidence, the very considerable evidence, which shows
that the world is governed by the power and foresight of one god, 'whose
energy and superiority are so great’ (says Plato inTimaeus) 'that no one can
conceive them intellectually nor express them in words, because his power is
too great and beyond measure.' 54 2 Could anyone doubt for a moment

50 Orac. Apoll. fr.: see M onat (1986), 89 n. 2. For Sminthius, see Iliad i 39. The epithet is
probably from a word for mouse: Apollo mouse-god, i.e., plague-god. For demons, see 2.14.5-
9 and n. 63 there.

51 Reading fit (as in ms M), not sit.

52 Orac. Sib. 8.7,15ff; cf, fr. 1.17, and 7.

53 Sen. F87, 202 (Vottero).

54 The quotation is in Latin, but the sense is some way from the original (Plato, Ti. 28c); the
passage quoted was something of a commonplace.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

whether God would find anything difficult or impossible when he has
planned all these wonderful works with his providence, has established them
with his virtue and has perfected them with his plan, or whether he would
now sustain them with his spirit and control them with his power, he the
incomprehensible, the ineffable, known to no other as he is to himself? 3 As
I meditate more and more upon this greatness of his, worshippers of gods
have come to seem to me so blind, so mindless, so thoughtless, so like the
dumb beasts, in believing that people born of the coition of male and female
could have had any element of superiority and divine excellence. Why, the
Sibyl of Erythraesays, 5 'A man’s thighs and a womb cannot create a god.' 55
4 If that is true, which it is, plainly Hercules, Apollo, Bacchus, M ercury and
J upiter himself were also merely men, since they were born of a pairing of
the sexes. 5 Is there anything quite so remotefrom God as the activity which
he himself gave to mankind for the procreation of its offspring and which
simply has to be physical to work at all? If the gods are therefore immortal,
eternal and everlasting, what is the point of a second sex? To procreate? Of
course! A nd what is the point of progeny? Those who live for ever do not
need successors. 6 In human beings and in the other animals, obviously,
difference of sex, copulation and procreation exist simply so that all living
species, doomed by the condition of their mortality to die, can live on
through their successors; whereas God who lives for ever needs neither a
second sex nor a succession. 7 'What about providing himself with servants,’
it will be suggested, 'or people to exercise his power on?' What is the point
in that case of the female sex, since God who is all-powerful, as people say,
could produce children without using the labour of a female? 8 If certain
very small creatures have the power of 'picking themselves children off
leaves and off sweet plants with their mouths' [Verg. G. 4.200-01], why
should anyone think that God himself could not procreate except by
copulation with a second sex? Even a fool must realise the mortality of those
who are addressed and worshipped as gods by the ignorant and stupid. 'Then
how are they thought to be gods?' someonewill say. It’sobvious: they were
kings, very great and powerful kings; their virtues, their service and skills
became well known, their subjects loved them for the worth of those qualities,
and to remember them they treated them as holy. Anyone in doubt should
look at their achievements, recorded in their entirety by both the poets and
the early historians.

55 Orac. Sib. 3.Iff; cf, fr. 3.If.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

H ercules

ftlHercules is renowned for his virtues; he is seen as a sort of Africanus
among the gods. 56 Yet his rapes and adulteries and other sexual exploits
fouled thevery earth thathistravelsaresaid to havecleansed. No wonder: he
was the product of Alcmena's adultery. What divinity could there be in a
man who was the slave of his own vices and broke all laws in bringing
infamy, shame and disgrace on male and female alike? 2 Even the great and
wonderful deeds he did ought not to compel the judgment that they must be
attributed plainly to divine virtues in him. W hat is so very remarkable after
all about overcoming a lion and a boar, about shooting down birds with
arrows, aboutcleaning outa king'sstable, about conquering an Amazon and
wrenching off her girdle, or killing some wild horses together with their
owner? 57 Those are the deeds of a brave man, but of a man, be it noted: 3 his
victims were frail and mortal. As Cicero observes [Marc. 8], 'There is no
power so great that it cannot be weakened and broken by weapons of
strength; 4 to tame one's own spirit and contain one’s own passions' takes a
very brave man. Hercules never did that, and never could have. 'I don't
compare anyone who can do that with even the greatest of men: I think him
very like a god.'

I wish Cicero had added something about lust and self-indulgence, and
greed and contempt, in order to complete the tale of virtue in the man he
thought to be godlike. 5 The man who gets the better of a lion is not to be
thought braver than the man who tames that wild beast within him of irasci¬
bility; picking off gluttonous birds is not braver than conquering a ravening
greed; beating a warrior Amazon or cleaning the muck from a stable is not
braver than subduing the lust that wars against self-respect and reputation, or
cleaning vice from one's own heart: these vices are more destructive for
being one's own personal wickedness than are those which can with duecare
be avoided. 6 Hence, the only man who ought to be judged brave is the one
who is self-controlled, temperate and just. Anyone who pondered the works
of God would soon think all these things that stupid people gape at ludi¬
crous. Peoplethink of them as they do becauseof theweakness of theirown

56 P. Cornel iusScipio Africanus, conqueror of Hannibal. For the comparison with Hercules
see 18.11-13 below. L. picks out Hercules for criticism together with Jupiter. It is no
coincidence that M aximian called himself Herculius and Diocletian was known asjovius, after
J upiter. See pp. 43-44 above.

57 L. refers to six of Hercules' labours: the Nemean lion, the Erymanthian boar, the
Stymphalian birds, the Augean stables, Hippolyta's belt and Diomedes and his mares. In 5
below he repeats four of them.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

powers, and not for any divine virtues in them, which they know nothing of
anyhow. 7 No one has denied the fact that Hercules was slave not only to
king Eurystheus (which could be seen as honourable up to a point) but also
to Omphale, a woman of great impropriety, who dressed him up in her own
clothes and made him sit at herfeet spinning wool. Revolting! Degenerate!
B ut that was the price of pleasure.

8 'W hat about you?’ they’ll say. 'Do you think poets are credible?’ Why
shouldn't I? It’s not a story by Lucilius, or by Lucian, 58 who spared neither
gods nor men; it is told especially by those who sang their gods' praises, 9 and
if we have no confidence in them, whom shall we believe? Anyone who
thinks they are liars should offer us some other believable authors to tell us
who those gods are, how they were created and where from, what their
strength, number and capacity is, what is wonderful about them and worth
worship, and what mystery they hold of special truth and reliability. There
won't be a single one. 10 So let’s believe those poets: they did not speak to
rebuke their gods, but to proclaim them.

Hercules sailed off therefore with the Argonauts and sacked Troy in his
fury with Laomedon, who had denied him his reward for saving his daughter.
That makes it plain when he lived. He also killed his wife and children in a
fit of mad passion. 11 Yet people think he is a god! His heir Philoctetes did
notthink so: he put the torch to his pyre, and watched his limbs and muscles
burn and disintegrate; he buried his bones and ashes on M ount Oeta, for
which kindness he received the hero's bow and arrows.

Sundry gods

IOlI Aesculapius is another whose birth was Apollo’s fault. What did he do
to earn divine honours except for healing Hippolytus? At least his death was
more distinguished: he earned a god’s thunderbolt. 2 In his Famous Men
Tarquitius says 'he was born of unknown parents; he was exposed, and
found by huntsmen; he was reared on dog milk and handed over to Chiron
who taught him healing; he had been a M essenian but lived at Epidaurus.' 59
Cicero adds [N.D. 3.57] that he was buried at Cynosura.

3 What about his father A polio? He disgracefully rustled another man's
herd because of a love affair that inflamed him; he built walls for Laomedon

58 Lucilius was a Roman poet and satirist of the 2nd century BC. The reference to Lucian,
a Greek writer of the 2nd century AD, is seen by some as an interpolation.

59 Tarquitius Priscus (an eminent Etruscan of the mid 1st cent. BC) translated or adapted
Etruscan books into Latin.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

under a contract he could bilk him of without redress; and he was the first to
teach thatfaithless king to defaulton his agreements with the gods. Healso
molested a pretty boy 60 while kissing him, and killed him as he played with
him. 4 M ars was a murderer. The Athenians in gratitude acquitted him on the
charge. To avoid appearing too fierce and savage, he then committed adultery
with Venus. 5 Castor and Pollux, busy grabbing other men’s wives, left off
being twins. One of them was slain by a swordthrust from Idas, who was
provoked to anger by the liberties being taken, and the poets say they then
lived and died in alternation. That makes them the most miserable of men, as
well as of gods: they are not permitted to die once and for all. 6 Homer,
however, records them both simply as dead (which is not the standard story):
when he sat Helen on the walls beside Priam, recognising all the Greek
leaders and missing only her own brothers, he added a line to her speech as
follows: 'So she spoke, but they were kept buried in earth.' 61 7 As for that
thief and trickster M ercury, what has he I eft to his name and fame except the
record of his deceptions? He earns his place in the sky, no doubt, for
inventing wrestling schools and being first to construct a lyre!

8 Of supreme authority in the senate of the gods, with right to speak first
in debate, must be father Bacchus, the only one of them all, J upiter apart, to
win a triumph, after leading his army to victory in India. Yet our invincible
general, Indicus the greatest, became the shameful victim of passion and
lust. 62 9 He landed in Crete'with his semi-male retinue', 63 and found a loose
woman on the shore; in the confidence of his Indian victory, and wanting to
play the man (in case he looked too effeminate), he bound himself in
marriage to a woman who had betrayed her father, had killed her brother and
had already been ditched and disowned by another man. Side by side Bacchus
and she, now 'liberated' herself, 64 ascended into heaven.

10 And what of J upiter, the father of all these others, who is solemnly
invoked as Best and Greatest? From his earliest boyhood he can be accused
of disrespect and virtual parricide, when he drove his father off the throne
and chased him out, unable in his desire to be king to wait for the feeble old

60 Hyacinthus is meant. See Ovid, Met. 10.162-219.

61 L. quotes the line (II. 3.243) in a Latin version.

62 Cf. V. Max. 3.6.6 for Bacchus. L. makes play with several Roman practices in this
section: the order in which a presiding consul called senators to speak, the title 'pater', the right
to triumphs, and the adoption of extra names (like Indicus) to mark them.

63 Verg. A. 4.215.

64 Bacchus was commonly called Liber in Latin, as L. calls him here. He calls Ariadne
Libera to work the pun on name and status.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

fellow’s death. Once he had seized his father’s throne by force of arms, the
Titans provoked him to a war: and that was the beginning of trouble for the
human race. After theTitans' defeat and the establishment of a lasting peace,
he spent the rest of his life in debauch and adultery. 111 omit the girls he
abused, since that tends to pass for tolerable; I cannot, however, pass by
Amphitryo and Tyndarus; their homes he filled quite full of shame and
dishonour. 12 But the crown of his impiety and wickedness was the seizure of
a king’s son for sex. 65 Fouling and shaming himself with assaults on the
honour of women was plainly of little note if he failed to abuse his own sex:
real adultery has to be unnatural. 13 We have to wonder whether such a
performer can be called Greatest; Best, certainly not. That title has nothing to
do with corruption, adultery and unchastity, unless perhaps we human beings
are wrong in calling people who do such things wicked and desperate, and in
condemning them to every penalty they deserve. 14 But then, Cicero was silly
to attack Verres for his adulteries: J upiter too committed adultery, and Cicero
worshipped J upiter. So too when he attacked P. Clodius for incest with his
sister: 66 j upiter Best and Greatest had the same woman 'for sister and wife.' 67

J upiter (continued) and Saturn

HI Who can be so witless, then, as to think that someone is reigning in
heaven who would not deserve to reign on earth? The poet who wrote the
Triumph of Cupid was no fool; in it he makes Cupid not only the most
powerful of the gods but also their conqueror. 68 2 One by one he listed the
love affairs that had brought them under Cupid’s power and control, and he
created a procession in which J upiter is led in chains, together with the rest
of the gods, in front of the victor’s chariot. It makes a pretty enough picture,
and without being far from the truth, either. 3 A nyone devoid of goodness,
anyone prisoner to the evils of greed and lust, is the victim not of Cupid, as
the poet put it, but of everlasting death.

65 Amphitryo and Tyndarus were both cuckolded by Zeus; Amphitryo's wife Alcmena
produced twins, Hercules being Zeus' son and Iphicles the son of Amphitryo, while Tyndarus'
wife Leda, seduced by Zeus in the guise of a swan, produced Castor, Pollux, Helen and
Clytemnestra. The king's son mentioned is Ganymede, son of a king of Troy.

66 For C. Verres see 2.4.27-37 below. P. Clodius (c. 92-52 BC), a maverick politician of the
late Republic, was accused of violating the Bona Dea ceremony in December 62 by attending
dressed as a woman. Cicero broke his alibi, but Clodius had his revenge in 58 when he secured
Cicero's exile.

67 Verg. A. 1.47.

68 Ovid, Am. 1.2.23ff describes a triumph of Cupid, but without Olympians in it.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

4 Let us talk no more of their behaviour and study the facts instead, so
that people can understand the errors that make them so miserable. 5 The
mass of people thinks that J upiter reigns in the sky; this is the conviction of
learned and ignorant alike, and it is seen in all their religion, in their prayers
and hymns, and in their shrines and images. 6 They also say, however, that
he was born of Saturn and Rhea. How can he be seen as a god, or, as the poet
says [A. 12.829], 'inventor of people and things’, when there were countless
thousands of people in existence before he was, the ones who lived when
Saturn was king and who saw the light sooner than J upiter did? 7 I observe
that there was one god who was king in early times, and another in the period
following. It is possible, therefore, that there is yet another still to come. If
the kingship changed before, why should we despair of it changing later? -
unless, perhaps, Saturn had the power to produce a stronger successor but
J upiter does not? 8 And yet, either divine authority is immutable for ever, or,
if it can change hands (which is impossible), it can do so at any time. Can
J upiter then lose his kingship, just as his father did? 9 Of course he can.
Though he failed to spare maidens and married women, he did refrain from
Thetis, and only Thetis, because of the oracle that any child born of her
would be greater than his father. 10 That argues first a lack of foresight in
J upiter not proper in a god: had Themis 69 not told him the future, he would
not have known it; and if he were not to be divine, he would not even be a
god (divinity is so called from god, as humanity is from man 70 ); 11 second,
it argues his awareness of his weakness: he was afraid of a greater. A nyone
with that fear must know he is not the 'Greatest' since something greater is
capable of existing. 12 Then there is his solemn oath, sworn on the waters of
Styx, 'the only oath of might granted to the gods above.’ 71 W hat is this oath
of might, and who granted it? Is there some very great power which can
punish gods who commit perjury? Why are they so scared of the waters
below if they themselves are immortal? Why should they fear something
which will only be seen by those who have to die? 13 And why in that case
should human beings raise their eyes to the sky, and why should they swear
by the gods above when those very gods above look down to the gods below
to find their objects of worship and adoration? W hat does it mean for there
to befates obeyed by all the gods, includingj upiter himself? 14 If the power

69 Themis, traditionally the child of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), was seen as an
oracular goddess, preceding Apollo at Delphi.

70 L.'s argument is etymological: the adjective of deus, god, isdiuinus, and the adjective of
homo, man, is humanus; he is right in both pairs.

71 Verg. A. 12.817.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

of the fates is so strong that they can do more than all the celestial beings
together and more than their ruler and lord, why should they not be said to
hold sway, since necessity compels their laws and statutes to be obeyed by
every god? Can anyone doubt that'greatest' is not the word for anyone who
accepts the superiority of something else? If it were, that 'greatest' person
would not accept fate: he would cause it.

15 I return now to a point passed over before. That self-restraint which
J upiter accepted in the case of one woman, despite his passion for her, was
due to no good instinct but to fear of his own successor. 16 That panic is
absolutely typical of someone who is mortal, weak and worthless: after all,
the child could have been destroyed at birth, as J upiter’s own elder brother
was; if that child had lived, he would never have yielded power to his
younger brother. But J upiter was preserved by stealth and reared in secret,
and was named Zeus or Zen, not as certain people think from the 'seething
of celestial fire’ or because he is 'giver of life' and puts breath in the
creatures that breathe, which is a power of god alone- what breath could be
created in them by someone receiving his own from elsewhere? - but
because he was the first of Saturn’s male children who 'lived.' 72 17 If Saturn
had not been tricked by his wife, mankind could have had a different god as
ruler. Oh, but that’s a poetical fiction! Not so: anyone thinking that is wrong.
The poets were talking about men, but they used the word god of them in
order to mark out the ones whose memories they recorded with approval.
Fiction is thus a better label for what they said of them as gods than for what
they said of them as men, as will become cl ear from the example I shall now
present.

18 When he was going to rape Danae, he showered her lap with gold
coins as payment for his lust. The poets were unwilling to talk down the
power of the divine greatness which people believed in; they were speaking
in effect about a god; they contrived a descent of J upiter in a shower of gold,
using the same metaphor as in the showers of iron they talk of when
describing volleys of missiles and arrows. 19 They say he stole Ganymede 73
on an eagle: that is also poetical embellishment. In fact, either he stole him
using soldiers - the legionary standard is an eagle - or the ship on which he
put him had an eagle as its guardian image, like the bull when he stole
Europa and carried her away. 20 In the same fashion they say that he turned

72 Zen (Zan in Doric Greek: see 46 below) is Zeus. L. is etymologising again, zen or zan
was the G reek for to live; zein meant to seethe.

73 L. uses the Latin form of his name, Catamitus.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

lo daughter of Inachus into a cow; in order to escape the anger of J uno, she
is said to have swum across the sea and come to Egypt 'now beset with
bristles, now a cow’ 74 and there, regaining her original shape, she became
the goddess now called Isis. 21 So what argument is there to prove that
Europa did not sit on a bull and lo was not made into a cow? This: there is a
special day in the calendar when the 'Voyage of Isis’ is celebrated. 75 That
shows that she did not swim but went by boat. 22 People with any sense of
their own intelligence realise that a living and earthly body cannot exist in
the sky, and so they dismiss the whole tale of Ganymede as false; but they
fail to see that it all happened on earth, matter and lust being earthly things.
23 The poets have thus not created events - if they did they would be impos¬
tors- but they have added a certain colour to events. They were not writing
in denigration but in a desire to embellish. 24 That is what deceives people,
especially because all the while that they think of these things as poetical
fictions they are worshipping what they do not recognise. They do not know
the limits of poetical licence and how far one may go in a fiction, since a
poet’s business lies in transposing reality into something else with metaphor
and allusion and in covering up the misrepresentation with charm. 25 To
misrepresent the whole of one's subject matter is merely inept, however; to do
that argues a liar, not a poet.

26 Suppose, however, that the poets did create the works we think of as
fables: would that be true also of their writings on female gods and their
marriages with gods? Why are they so depicted and so worshipped? Perhaps
it is not only the poets who lie, but also the painters and the statue makers.
27 If J upiter is this god that people say he is and not the child of Saturn and
Ops, thereoughtto be no statuein all the temples except his alone. 28What
is the point of likenesses of women? Why the weaker sex at all? If this
J upiter did fall for them, the very stone of his statues will declare him a man.
29 People say the poets are liars and yet they believe them: but in fact they
prove that they were not liars. They make their images of gods in such a way
that the truth of the poets’ tales is demonstrated by precisely the difference of
sex. W hat other message is there in a statue of Ganymede and the image of
an eagle set before J upiter’s feet in temples and worshipped equally with
him, except the perpetuation for ever of the record of a foul deed of rape?

30 No poetical work is a total fiction. There is some element perhaps of
adaptation and concealment by metaphor so that the truth can be hidden in

74 Verg. A. 7.790.

75 5 M arch, when the seas are open again to navigation.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

wraps, like the tale of the allotment of kingdoms. J upiter got the sky, they
say, Neptune got the sea and Pluto the underworld. W hy was the third lot not
the earth? Perhaps because it all took place on earth. 31 The truth of the
matter is that kingship of the world was divided and allotted in such a way
that control over the east went to J upiter and the western share fell to Pluto,
also called Agesilaus, 76 on the grounds that the eastern shore, the source of
light for mortals, is the upper one, whereas the western shore appears to be
lower. That is how they veiled the truth in falsehood, so that the truth should
not of itself upset popular belief. 32 The matter of Neptune’s share is plain:
his kingship we reckon to be the same as M . Antonius’ command without
limit, when the senate gave him power over every coastal area so that he
could pursue the pirates and bring peace to the whole M editerranean; 77 that
was Neptune's share: all the coasts with the islands.

33 How can that be proved? It is the plain lesson of ancient history.
Euhemerus, 78 a long dead writer who came from M essene, gathered together
the deeds of Jupiter and of the others thought to be gods and stitched
together his H istory out of sacred dedications and inscriptions which were
kept in the oldest temples and especially in the tempi e of j upiter Tri phy I i us:
the dedication there indicated that a gold column had been put in place by
J upiter himself, and he inscribed his achievements on it to be a memorial of
his deeds for posterity. 34 This is the History that Ennius took up and
followed, and these are Ennius’ words: 'WhenJ upiter gave Neptune command
of the sea, and kingship over all islands and all areas by the sea... ' 79 The
poets thus got it right, but obscured it with a sort of veil. 35 M ount Olympus
is also capable of giving the poets an image: they could say thatj upiter was
allotted kingship of the sky, because Olympus is an ambiguous word
meaning both mountain and sky. The H istory already cited says thatj upiter
had lived on Olympus: 'At that period J upiter was spending most of his time
on M ount Olympus, and people came to him there for justice in cases of
controversy. So too, people who discovered something of useful application

76 An epithet for H ades, referring to his role as leader or host of the dead. SeeAeschylus, fr.
406 (Nauck); Call. Lav. Pall. 130.

77 N ot the famous M ark Antony, but his father M . Antoni us Creticus, who for his campaign
against the pirates in 74 B C received powers equal to those of any governors he encountered.

78 Euhemerus of M essene (either the Peloponnesian or the Sicilian town) lived in the early
3rd century BC, and wrote a work of fiction, the Sacred Record, in which he argued that the
Olympian gods were promoted mortals. Ennius translated or adapted his work about a hundred
years later, and L. drew on that composition probably through an intermediary, who may have
been Varro. See conveniently Bosworth (1999), 10-13.

79 Enn. Euhem. fr. 7 (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 424.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

to human life would come there and show it to J upiter.' 80 3 6 The poets shift
a great deal in this fashion, not in order to misrepresent the gods (whom they
worship, after all) but to increase the grace and charm of their poetry with a
variety of images. People who fail to understand how and why each detail is
thus represented attack the poets for lies and sacrilege. 37 This is the mistake
that misled philosophers: they could see the inappropriateness in a god of
the things being said about J upiter, and they assumed two Jupiters, one
natural and the other mythological. 38 They saw the truth in part: the person
the poets spoke of was a human being, of course, but they went wrong about
the natural J upiter: popular religious custom persuaded them to transfer a
man’s name to a god, and, as said above, god needs no proper name because
he is on his own. But J upiter is the child of Ops and Saturn, and that is
undeniable.

39 People who attribute the name J upiter to God most high are thus
victims of a vain belief. Some of them try to defend their errors with the
following explanation: persuaded of one god and unableto deny it, they say
firmly that it is him they worship, but that they decided to call him J upiter.
W hat could be sillier than that? J upiter cannot be worshipped without his
household of wife and daughter, and that makes it plain who he is, and it is
improper to switch his name where there is no M inerva or J uno. 40 What
about the fact that the meaning of the name indicates a human, and not a
divine, capacity? 'Jupiter and Juno are so named from helping,' 81 says
Cicero by way of explanation [N ,D. 2.64, 66]; 'J upiter is a version of helpful
father.' The name is particularly unsuitable for a god, since help is a human
activity: one person brings some element of assistance to another who is a
stranger, and the benefit is slight. 41 Nobody prays to god for help, but to be
saved, and to have life and salvation: that is much more than mere help, and
much more important. And since we are speaking of a father, no father is
said to 'help' his sons when he creates them or brings them up. The word is
too trivial to express the importance of a father's generosity. 42 How much
more inappropriate it is for God, who is the true father, through whom we
exist and whose possession we all are; he makes us, inspirits us, illuminates
us; he gives us life, health and all manner of food. 43 People who think they
are only helped by God fail to understand his acts of virtue. People who
reduce the excellence of supreme power by calling it J upiter are not just
ignorant but irreligious.

80 Enn. Euhem. fr. 8 (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 424.

81 To help is iuuare (J upiter and J uno were then spelt with i, not j, a letter form developed
much later). Varro, L. 5.65, quotes Ennius for the same point.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

44 If we have grasped thatj upiter was a man both in his deeds and in his
behaviour and that he was a king on earth, it remains for us to investigate his
death. 45 Enniusin hisSacred FI i story described all thathedid in hislifeand
finally said: 82 'After J upiter had gone five times round the earth and had
divided and willed his powers among all his friends and relations, while for
men he prepared laws, customs and food and did many other good things,
then stirred by the undying glamour of his record he left memorials to his
people that would lastforever. 46 A s his I ife went i nto decline, he removed
to Crete and departed to the gods, and his sons the Curetes looked after him 83
and did him honour. Elis tomb is in Crete, in the town of Cnossos, which
Vesta issaid to havefounded; on the tomb isan inscription in ancientGreek
lettering, 'Zan Kronou’, which meansin LatinJ upiter son of Saturn.' 47 T hi s
is certainly not what the poets say; it is in the writers upon antiquities. But it
is true enough to be confirmed by the Sibylline verses which go as follows: 0
'Gods without souls, looking like exhausted corpses, whose tombs will be
the boast of sorry Crete.' 84 48 When Cicero in de Natura Deorum [N.D.
3.53] said 'three J upiters are counted by the theologians' he added that'the
third was Cretan, the son of Saturn, and his tomb is on display in the island.’
49 So how can god be alive in one place and dead in another, and have a
temple in one place and a tomb in another? The Romans need to realise that
their Capitol, the capital, that is, 85 of all their state religion, is simply a
meaningless memorial.

50 Now let us come to hisfather who reigned before him, and who may
perhaps have something extra in him, since he is said to have been born of
the meeting of remarkable elements. Let us see what there is in him worthy
of a god. First, there is the fact that he is said to have enjoyed a golden age
and that under him there was justice on earth. 51 I note something in him
which did not exist in his son: what could be so appropriate to a god as a rule
of justice and a time of piety? 52 But when I stop to think that he was born
in the usual fashion, I cannot imagine as god most high someone whose
superior in age I can see: sky and earth, that is. I want a god with absolutely
nothing beyond him, a god who is the original source of everything; such

82 Enn. Euhem. fr. 11 (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 428.

83 The Curetes are divine warriors of Crete who attend upon Zeus; or, in other myth, they
protect the newborn Zeus from his father Cronus by clashing shields. L.'s word for looked
after' is curauerunt: in its first syllable he sees a meaningful repetition of the first syllable of
C uretes. B ut C uretes is G reek and related to a G reek word for youth.

84 Orac. Sib. 8.47ff.

85 For the pun see Livy 5.54.7.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

must be the creator of heaven itself and the founder of the earth. 53 If Saturn
was born of these, as he is thought to be, how can he be the original god and
also owe his birth to others? Alternatively, who was in charge of the world
before Saturn was born? 54 As I said a little while ago, this is a poetical
fiction. Itwas impossiblefor elements without any senses and widely separ¬
ated from each other to meet in one place and produce a son, or for the son
that was born not to be very like his parents rather than have an appearance
which his own parents did not have.

55 Let us therefore seek the element of truth which lurks beneath this
image. In his book entitled Octavius Minucius Felix argues as follows
[23.10-12]: 'W hen Saturn had been forced by his son to flee and had come
to Italy, he was called son of the sky because we usually say that people
whose virtue we admire or who arrive all of a sudden have arrived out of the
blue; he was called son of the earth, however, because that is our title for
children of parents unknown.' 86 5 6 That is close to the truth, but not the
actual truth, because Saturn was already so called, as is generally agreed,
when he was still on the throne. 57 The argument could have gone thus:
when Saturn was in full regal authority, he bestowed his parents' names on
sky and earth in order to preserve their memory, sky and earth being pre¬
viously called something else; it is on the same basis, as we know, that
mountai ns and rivers get named. 58 W hen the poets speak of the offspring of
Atlas or of the river Inachus, they are absolutely not saying that human
beings were able to be created from things lacking the senses; they are
simply remarking on people born of those human beings who in their life¬
time or after death have given their names to mountains or rivers. 59 It was
a common practice in ancient time, particularly with the Greeks. We hear tel I
of seas named after people who fell into them, like the Aegean and the
Icarian sea and the Hellespont, and in LatiumAventinusgavehisnameto the
mountain where he was buried, and Tiberinus or Thybris did so to the river
in which hewas drowned. 60 Itshould be no surprise that the names of men
who were ancestors of great kings were attached to earth and sky. 61 Thus it
is clear that Saturn was not born of the sky, which is impossible, but from a
man whose name was U ranus. 87 Trismegistus is our authority for the truth of

86 This is the first of two citations of M inucius Felix by name (see also 5.1.2ff.); L. uses him
extensively. Minucius was apparently an advocate who practised in Rome. His Octavius
(composed between 197 and 248) is a dialogue, set in Ostia and conducted after the manner of
Cicero, between two friends of his, a pagan, Caecilius, and a Christian, Octavius. It ends with
the conversion of Caecilius. See Clarke (1974).

87 Uranus is the transliteration of a Greek word for heaven.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

this: when he observed that'there were very few whose I earning was perfect,’
he named among them 'U ranus, with Saturn and M ercury his kinsmen.' 88 62
This is what M inucius Felix failed to understand; hence the misdirection of
his history.

I haveshown how it could have been argued. I will now explain how and
where the naming was done and who did it. it wasnotthework of Saturn but
of Jupiter. 63 Enniusin hisSacred H istory reports as follows: 'Then hewas
taken to the Panchaean mountain 89 which is called the Pillar of Fleaven. 90
W hen J upiter had climbed it, he gazed all over the lands, and there on the
mountain he built an altar to heaven, and he was the first to sacrifice on the
altar. There he looked upatwhatwenow call heaven, and he gave the name
heaven to what is above the world, which used to be called aether, naming it
after his grandfather, and J upiter was the first to call what used to be called
aether heaven, doing so in a placatory spirit; the sacrificial victim that he
offered there he burnt entire.' 91 This is not the only place wherej upiter can
befound making sacrifice. 64 In hi s Aratus Germanicus reports A glaosthene
as saying that 'when Jupiter set out from the island of Naxos against the
Titans, and was making sacrifice on the shore, an eagle flew towards him by
way of omen; once Jupiter was victorious, he took the eagle under his
protection in acknowledgement of its good omen.’ 92 6 5 Earlier the Sacred
FI istory says that 'an eagle settled on his head as a portent of his kingship.' 93
Who else could Jupiter sacrifice to except to his grandfather heaven, of
whom Euhemerus says that 'he died in Oceania and was buried in the town
of Aulacia'? 94

88 NF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 5a.

89 Reading notPan eum but Panchaeum; see Warmington n. ad loc. So too Bryce (1990),
333, citing Jacoby, RE 6.957.

90 Alternatively (reading not stela but Stella), the Star of Heaven.

91 Enn. Euhem. fr. 6 (Vahlen) =Warmington pp. 422-24.

92 Germ, schol.fr. on 318-20, pp. 91,19 (Breysig). Germanicus(15 BC-A D 19) translated
into Latin the Phaenomena of Aratus of Sicyon (271-213 BC), and wrote comedies in Greek
and epigrams in Greek and Latin. Advanced by Augustus, he led Roman armies in Germany
under Tiberius, whose nephew and adopted son (AD 4) he was, but fell out with him and died
mysteriously in Syria, convinced that he had been poisoned by the governor of the province
Calpurnius Piso. The information quoted is not in Germanicus’ text but in a commentary on it.

93 Enn. Euhem. fr. 5 end (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 422.

94 Enn. Euhem. fr. 2 (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 418.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Stoic explanation

32.1 Now that we have exposed the mysteries of the poets and found
Saturn's parents, let us return to his virtues and deeds. 'He was just in his
kingship.’ 2 First, because hewas, forthatvery reason heis not god; second,
he was not even just, but wicked, not merely towards his sons, whom he
killed, but also towards his father, whose genitals he is said to have cut off -
which it is probable did happen. 3 Out of respect for the element called sky,
however, people dismiss the whole story as a very clumsy fiction, though the
Stoics, as usual, try to give it a physical explanation. In his discussion in de
Natura Deorum Cicero sets their theory out. 4 He says [N ,D. 2.64]: 'They
wished that organ of the body which needed contact with another body for
procreation to be no part of the heavenly, utterly superior nature of aether -
the fiery nature, that is - which could generate everything on its own.'

This logic could have fitted Vesta, if she were declared male. 5 People
think of Vesta as a virgin because fire is an inviolable element and nothing
can be born of it since it consumes everything it seizes. 6 Ovid in his Fasti
says [6.291-94]: 'Do not think of Vesta as anything other than living flame;
you can see that no creatures are born of flame. She is therefore rightly a
virgin who neither gives nor takes any seed and whose love is for the
companions of her virginity.' 7Thesamecould have been said ofVulcan: he
is thought of as god of fire, and yet the poets have not castrated him. It could
also have been said of the sun: all growth is dependent on the sun and
without the sun's fi ery heat nothing can be born ordevelop; no other element
needs genitals as much as heat does, since all conception, birth and nurture
require that cherishing warmth. 8 Finally, even if the sky were to be as
people want it, why should we think of it as castrated rather than just born
without sexual organs at all? If it creates of itself, then it never needed
genitals, even when creating Saturn. But if it did have the organs and they
were cut off by its son, the creation of everything, all nature, would have
failed.

9 What about people depriving Saturn himself not only of his divinity
but also of his humanity, when they assert that 'it is Saturn who contains the
circular course of space and time, and his Greek name means exactly that? 95
He is called 2 Cronos, which is the same as G Chronos, which means extent of
time; and he is called Saturn because he is saturated with years.' 10 Those
are Cicero's words [N.D. 2.64] setting out Stoic theory; its emptiness is

95 At this point L. switches from indirect to direct speech. Neither etymology is sound.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

readily intelligible to anyone. If Saturn is son of Sky, 96 how could Time be
born of Sky, or how after that could Time be deprived of his authority by his
son Jupiter? Or how could Jupiter be born of Time? Or how many years
would it take to saturate eternity which has no end?

E uhemerist explanation

Hllf then the theories of the philosophers are a waste of time, what are we
left with except to believe that one man’s castration by another really did
happen? Or does anyone think you can have a god who fears a co-heir? If he
had had somegodly quality, heoughtto havecutoff hisown genitals, nothis
father’s, to prevent the birth of J upiter, who deprived him of his possession
of the kingship. 2 When he took his sister Rhea to wife (in Latin we call her
Ops), he is said to have been told by an oracle not to rear male children
because he was going to be driven out by a son. Fearful of the prospect he
did not just swallow the sons born to him, as the stories say, but killed them,
despite it being written in the Sacred FI istory that 'Saturn and Ops and the
rest of their contemporaries were used to eating human flesh; it was J upiter
who first, in creating laws and customs for mankind, banned by edict their
freedom to feed on such food.’ 97 If that is true, what justice can there be in
Saturn? 3 Saturn devouring his sons we are certainly to see as fictitious, and
not without reason: are we to think that he ate his sons just because people
say so, when hefollowed them to their graves and committed them to burial?

W hen 0 ps gave bi rth to J upiter, she smuggled the i nfant out and sent him
to Crete in secret for his rearing. 4 Once again I must attack such unintelli¬
gence. Why did Saturn take an oracle from someone else? There he was in
the sky: could he not see on earth? 5 W hy did the Corybantes deceive him
with cymbals? 98 And finally, why did some greater power emerge which
could outdo his power? Ah, of course: an older man is easily defeated and
stripped of his authority by a younger man.

6 So Saturn was driven into exile, and after prolonged diversions he
came to Italy by boat, as Ovid reports in Fasti [1.233-34], 'It remains to
explain the boat. After roaming all over the world, it was by boat that the
sickle-bearing god came to the Tuscan river.’ 7 Fie was taken in by Janus

96 For Sky L. uses Caelus: see 13.14 below. The word for sky is caelum (neuter): L. is
taking advantage of the similarity of declension. He also puns on Saturn with saturate.

97 Enn. Euhem. fr. 9 (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 426.

98 The Corybantes are sometimes confused with the Curetes (see note on 11.46 above).
They are spirits of nature who protected the newborn Zeus (and the infant Dionysus).

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

poverty-stricken from his wanderings, and there are ancient coins to prove
the fact, on which there is J anus with his double face, and on the reverse a
ship, just as Ovid also says [239-40] in supplement: 'Posterity in its piety
stamped a boat upon its coppers, in witness of the arrival of this guest turned
god.' 8 Thus all writers, not just poets but historians and antiquarians too,
agree that he was a man, and the deeds he did in Italy have been recorded by
the Greeks Diodorus and Thallus and by the Romans Nepos, Cassius and
Varro."9 In the days when lifein Italy was rather rustic in style,' H e united
a stubborn stock scattered among high hills, gave laws to them, and had the
place called Latium because he once had lurked safely in theselands.' [Verg.
A. 8.321-23] 10 Does anyone think that one who got kicked out, who ran
away, and lay low, isagod? No oneisso silly. Peoplewho run away and hide
must be scared - scared of being beaten up and killed.

11 Orpheus, a rather more recent figure, records plainly that Saturn was
a king on earth, among men: G 'First king of all over terrestrial men was
C ronos, and from C ronos was born the great ki ng far-thunderi ng Zeus.' 100 12
Likewise our own Vergil [G. 2.538]: 'Such was the life that golden Saturn
lived upon earth,’ and in another place [A. 8.324-25]: 'His reign was the
period called in legend the Golden Age, so favourable the peace in which he
ruled his peoples.' 13 He does not say in the first quotation that Saturn spent
his life in heaven, nor in the second that he ruled the gods in peace. Hence it
is obvious that he was a king on earth, which is what he says more plainly
elsewhere [A. 6.793-95]: 'he shall restore the Golden Age in Latium, in the
land where Saturn ruled of old.’

14 Ennius in his Euhemerus does not give priority to Saturn’s reign, but
to that of his father Uranus. 'In the beginning,' he says, 'first Caelus held
supreme sway on earth. Heestablished and organised that kingship for him¬
self together with his brothers.’ 101 15 A difference of father and son between
two very considerable authors is no great matter. In any case, each is a
possibility: U ranus could begin to outdo the rest in power and get himself the

99 Diodorus of Sicily, who lived in Rome from 56 to 30 BC, wrote a universal history down
to 60. Fifteen of the 40 books survive in their entirety, the others in fragments. Thallus was a
Greek chronographer who lived under the early principate; Theophilus (see note on 23.2
below), Autol. 3.29, points to Thallus’ euhemerist tendencies. Cornelius N epos (c. 99-24 BC)
was a minor historian and biographer; 25 biographies are extant. Cassius Hemina was a Latin
annalist of the 2nd. cent. BC. The same four are mentioned in M in, Fel. 23.9. See also Tert.
apol, 10.7 (but he surnames Cassius Severus: see Quint. Inst. 11.1.57); nat. 2.12.26 (with
Tacitus for Thallus). The ultimate source is Varro.

100 Orph. fr. 243 (Abel) = 139 (Kern).

101 Enn. Euhem. fr. 1 (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 418.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

leadership but not the kingship, and then Saturn could accumulate greater
resources for himself and claim the title of king.

E uhemerist explanation (continued)

M.lSi nee there is a certain difference between the Sacred FI istory and what
I havequoted, let us now lay out the contents of truthful literature, to prevent
any idea that in attacking religions we follow poets and approve of their
stupidities. 2 Here are Ennius' words: 'Then Saturn took Ops to wife. Titan,
the elder brother, demanded the kingship for himself. Vesta their mother,
with their sisters Ceres and Ops, persuaded Saturn not to give way to his
brother in the matter. 3 Titan was less good-looking than Saturn; for that
reason, and also because he could see his mother and sisters working to have
it so, he conceded the kingship to Saturn, and came to terms with him: if
Saturn had a male child born to him, it would not be reared. This was done
to secure reversion of the kingship to Titan’s children. 4 They then killed the
first son that was born to Saturn. Next came twin children, J upiterandj uno.
J uno was given to Saturn to see while J upiter was secretly removed and
given to Vesta to be brought up without Saturn's knowledge. 5 In the same
way without Saturn knowing, Ops bore Neptune and hid him away. In her
third 102 labour Ops bore another set of twins, Pluto and Glauce. (Pluto in
Latin is Diespiter; some call him Orcus.) Saturn was shown his daughter
Glauce but his son Pluto was hidden and removed. Glauce then died young.
6 That is the pedigree, as written, of J upiter and his brothers; that is how it
has been passed down to us in holy scripture.' 103 7 A little later he adds in
similar fashion: 'Next, when Titan realised Saturn had sons who had been
born and brought up without his knowledge, he gathered his own sons about
him (they are called Titani), seized his brother Saturn and Ops, built a wall
around them and set a guard over them.’ 104 8 The truth of this account is
upheld by the Erythrean Sibyl’s nearly identical version; only in a few,
irrelevant details is there any difference. 105 9 J upiter is thus acquitted of the
very great crime of (as is alleged) putting his father in fetters. That was the
act of his uncle Titan, done because Saturn had reared male children in
contravention of their agreement and his oath.

102 Fourth: Ennius has either disallowed the first birth or miscounted.

103 Enn. Euhem. fr. 3 (Vahlen) =Warmington pp. 418-20.

104 Enn. Euhem. fr. 4 (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 420.

105 Orac. Sib. 3.110ff, 199ff.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

10 The remainder of the H istory goes as follows: 'WhenJ upiter grew up
and heard that his father and mother were ringed about with guards and had
been thrown into chains, he came with a great host of Cretans and conquered
Titan and his sons in battle; he released his parents, restored his father to the
kingship, and then went back to Crete. 11 After that Saturn was warned by
an oracle to beware of his son driving him off the throne. To remove the
threat of the oracle and to avoid the danger, he plotted to havej upi ter killed;
J upi ter learnt of the plot, reclaimed his right to rule, and put Saturn to flight.
12 Saturn was chased from land to land, pursued by armed men sent by
J upiter to seize him or kill him; with difficulty he found a place in Italy
where he could hide.' 106

Deification in history

ISulThat makes it clear that they were men; it is also clear why they began
to be called gods. 2 If there were no kings before Saturn or Uranus, because
of the lack of population - life was rustic, and people lived without rulers -
then no doubt that was the time when people began to honour a particular
king and all his family with special adoration and new distinctions, to the
point of actually calling them gods, either for their remarkable good
qualities (an opinion which would be honestly held by people still rough and
simple) or, as tends to be the case, in deference to their actual power, or
because of their welcome promotion of civilisation. 3 Since those kings
were highly regarded by the people whose lives they had civilised, at their
deaths a great yearning ensued for them. 4 Hence the statues of them that
people put up, so that by gazing at the likenesses they could find some
consolation; taking it a bit further, out of their affection they began to
cultivate a memory of the dead, partly to show their gratitude to men who
had served them well and partly to spur their successors to a desire to be
good rulers themselves.

5 This is what Cicero says in de Natura Deorum [N.D. 2.62]: 'Human
life and its pattern of communality developed to a point where men notable
for their good deeds were raised to the skies in popular report and in popular
wish. Hence Hercules, Castorand Pollux, Aesculapius and Bacchus.’ 6 Else¬
where he says [3.50]: 'It can be seen in many communities that the memory
of brave men was made into something holy by honouring them like
immortal gods, either to sharpen people's courage or to persuade all good

106 Enn. Euhem. fr. 5 (Vahlen) =Warmington pp. 420-22.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

citizens to take risks willingly for the sake of the community.' This is the
reason, no doubt, why the Romans treated their Caesars as holy, and so did
theM oors their kings. 7 In this way, little by little cults came into being; the
original generation that knew them instilled the ritual into their children and
grandchildren, and so into all their descendants, and finally these great kings
were worshipped in every land because of the fame of their names. 8 In
individual communities, on the other hand, separate cults of great veneration
developed for the founders of particular clans or towns, whether those
founders were men of notable courage or women of wonderful chastity: so
Egypt worships Isis, theM oors worship J uba, the M acedoniansCabirus, the
Carthaginians Urania, the people of Lati urn Faunus, the Sabi nesSancus, and
the Romans Quirinus; 9 in exactly the same way Athens worships M inerva,
Samos Juno, Paphos Venus, Lemnos Vulcan, Naxos Bacchus, and Delos
worships Apollo. 10 Thus among different peoples and territories different
rites get instituted for as long as people want to give thanks to their leaders
and cannot discover what other marks of honour to offer their dead. 107

11 The biggest contribution to error came in any case from the piety of
their successors: they offered, and required others to offer, divine honours to
their ancestors precisely in order to seem to be born of divine stock them¬
selves. 12 No one can have any doubts about how the worship of these gods
began when they read in Vergil Aeneas’ instructions to his companions [A.
7.133-34]: 'Now makelibation with bowlstoj upiterand call in prayerupon
my father A nchises'. It was not just immortality that he granted him, but
power over the winds as well [5.59-60]: 'Let us pray for favourable winds:
may he grant me, my city once founded, to hold these rites each year at a
shrine dedicated to him’. 13 That is patently what Bacchus, Pan, M ercury
and Apollo did about J upiter, and what their descendants then did about
them. The poets joined in, writing their poetry in compliment, and lauding
them to the skies, as happens now when bad kings are extolled in dishonest
panegyrics.

14 The corruption began with the Greeks; it is incredible what clouds of
falsehood have been whipped up out of irresponsibility plentifully equipped
with facile rhetoric. They started the institution of the cults and also passed
them onto everyone else, out of mere admiration. 15 This is the vain nonsense
that the Sibyl attacked them for: G '0 Greece, why have you put your faith in
men as leaders? W hy do you offer the dead gifts that are empty? A re you

107 A list of gods and the peoples who worshipped them is a commonplace. See e.g. Ovid,
Fast. 3.81ff.; Tert. apol. 24.7; Min. Fel. 6.2.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

sacrificing to images? Who set your wits a-roaming after these mysteries,
abandoning the face of almighty God?' 108 16 In the book that he wrote to
console himself for his daughter's death, Cicero, who was not just a perfect
orator but also a philosopher (the only philosopher, in fact, to follow Plato
closely) declared unhesitatingly that the godswho were worshipped in public
had been men. 109 17 His testimony deserves to be taken very seriously
because he not only held a priesthood in the col lege of augurs but also attests
his own worship and veneration of those gods. 18 In a few lines he has thus
given us two points: when he said that he was going to consecrate an image
of his daughter in the same way that gods were consecrated by earlier genera¬
tions, f i rst he has exposed the fact that those gods had di ed and second he has
revealed the origin of the empty superstition. 19 'Since we can see in the
sum of the gods,' he says, 'great numbers of human beings both male and
female, and since we venerate their most holy shrines in city and in country,
let us acknowledge the wisdom of those whose inventive talents have
organised and established the laws and institutions that govern our whole
lives. 20 If consecration ought ever to have happened to any living being, it
certainly belongs to her. If a reputation in heaven was deserved by the off¬
spring of Cadmus, Amphitryo or Tyndarus, for sure the same distinction
ought to be hers, and I will see that it happens. You were the best and most
learned of all daughters; I will put you among the gods with the gods’ own
approval, and I will make you sacred in the thinking of all mortals.'

21 It may perhaps be said that excess of grief had sent Cicero mad. On
the contrary: the whole of that work, perfect in its learning, illustration and
style, marks a temperament and judgment not ailing but resolute, and the
passage quoted offers no sign of anguish at all. 22 Indeed, I am sure he could
not have written with such variety, fullness and control if his grief had not
been tempered by his own reason, by the comfort of his friends and the
passage of time. 23 What about the fact that he says the same in de Republica
and in deGloria? In Laws, where hefollowed Plato in the desire to write the
laws which he thought a fair and sensible state would have, he prescribed as
follows for religion [2.19]: 'Let them worship as gods both those who have
always been treated as celestial and those whose deserts have placed them in
heaven, Hercules, Bacchus, Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux and Quirinus.' 24 So
too in his Tusculan Disputations, in remarking that virtually the whole of
heaven was occupied by humankind, he said [1.29]: 'If I tried to examine the

108 Orac. Sib. 3.545, 547-49.

109 Cic. Consol, fr. 23 (Vitelli).

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

tradition and then to pick from it the instances given by the writers of
Greece, precisely those who are held to be gods of most ancient stock will be
found to have started out for heaven from here, from us. 25 Since their 110
tombs are pointed out in Greece, remember, initiate as you are, the lore
imparted in the mysteries: then you will come to realise the huge extent of it.'
26 He has relied, of course, on Atticus’ understanding that the mysteries
could betaken as showing by themselves the human originsof all thosewho
are particular objects of worship; he said this about Hercules, Bacchus,
Aesculapius, Castor and Pollux without hesitation, but in the case of their
fathers Apollo and Jupiter, and also Neptune, Vulcan, Mars and Mercury
(the gods of most ancient stock, as he called them), he was scared to say it
openly. 27 Hence his phrase'the huge extent of it’: weareto understand that
J upiter and the rest of the older gods are included; if the ancients made the
memory of them sacred in the same way that Cicero says he would make the
image and name of his daughter sacred, in their grief they can be forgiven,
but not in their faith. 28 Who is so stupid as to think that heaven opens up for
the dead at the consent and determination of a host of idiots, or that anyone
can give to another w hat he does not possess hi mself?

29 J ulius Caesar became a god in Rome because that criminal M ark
Antony so decided; Quirinus became a god because some shepherds liked
the idea. Yet one of thetwo men killed hisbrother and theother one killed his
country. 30 B ut if A ntony had not been consul, Caesar would not have had
the honour for his service to the state that even a dead man gets; that was
indeed the advice of his father-in-law Piso and his kinsman L. Caesar, who
tried to ban his funeral from taking place, and of theother consul Dolabella,
who pulled down his column in the forum (his tomb, that is) and cleansed
the area. 111 31 Ennius says Romulus was much missed by his people. He
makes them speak as follows in their grief for their lost king: 112 '0 Romulus,
divine Romulus, what a guardian of your country the gods created in you!
You led us forth within the shores of light, o father, o begetter, o blood born
of the gods!’ 32 Because of this feeling of I oss the lie of J ulius Proculus was
more easily believed. He had been suborned by the senate to announceto the

110 'From us’ is in L.’s text but notin Cicero's, and for L.'s 'Since their', Cicero has 'Ask
whose’. L. is probably quoting from memory.

111 L. is inaccurate here. According to Appian (B.C. 2.135-36; cf. 129-30), who probably
drew on a contemporary and participant, A si ni us Pollio, Piso pressed for a public funeral for
Caesar while Dolabella at first backed the conspirators but then changed sides. See Weinstock
(1971), 346-55.

112 Enn. Ann. 111-14. See Skutsch (1985), 79.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

people that he had seen the king dressed in more than human magnificence,
and that the king had appointed him to have the people build him a shrine;
for he was a god, and his name was Quirinus. 33 This he did, and he convinced
the people that Romulus had departed to the gods, so freeing the senate from
suspicion of regicide.

Additional arguments

XS.1 1 could rest content with what I have quoted, but much still remains
which is necessary to the task I have taken on. 2 Although in destroying the
chief of the cults itself I have destroyed them all, nevertheless! would I ike to
hunt down the rest and confute this inveterate belief more fully, so that
peoplemay eventually be ashamed of their mistakes and repent of them. 3 It
is a great task, and worth a man’s while, that 'I proceed to release men’s
minds from the knots of superstition’, as Lucretius puts it [1.932] - though
he could not, since he had no truth to offer. That task belongs to us because
we maintain a true god and disprove false ones.

4 People therefore who think that stories about the gods are a poets'
creation both believe in the existence of female gods and worship them;
without realising it they are brought round to admitting what they denied,
that gods copulate and give birth. 5 Two sexes can only have been instituted
for the sake of producing offspring. People accept the distinction of sexes
and fail to realise the consequence of it, which is conception. That is not
possible for a god, but they think it is, since they claim children both for
J upiterand for all the other gods. 6 Thus new gods get born every day (gods
are not inferior to human beings in fertility) and everywhere is full of
innumerable gods, since none dies. 7 Human energy is unbelievable, and
human numbers are beyond count, but at least human birth is inevitably
followed by death; but what sum total of gods are we to think of as existing
in the end? Generation by generation they get born, and they never lose their
immortality. 8Why are there so few being worshipped? Ordo wethinkthat
there are two sexes of gods simply for pleasure, and not procreation, and
they are busy at things which we poor mortals are ashamed to do and to have
done to us? 9 But since certain particular gods are said to be born of certain
particular gods, it follows that if births occur at any time they occur at all
times, or if they have stopped, we ought to know the cause and time of their
stopping. 10 Seneca's observation in his books of M oral Philosophy is quite
witty: 'What is the reason then,’ he asks, 'that in the poets that sex-fiend
J upiter has stopped producing children? Is he over sixty, and infibulated by

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

thePapian law? Or has he appealed successfully to the three children law? 113
Or has he understood at last "Be done by as you did", and is he scared of
someone doing to him what he did to Saturn?'

11 Those who maintain these gods’ existence should look to the reply
they will make to this argument webring: if there are two sexes of gods, then
copulation follows; if that happens, then they will have to have houses, for
they are not so lacking in decency and modesty as to do it all together or in
public, as we see the dumb beasts do. 12 If they have houses, it follows that
they have towns, which is indeed what Ovid says [Met. 1.173-74]: 'The
plebeian gods live apart from the famous and important ones, who have set
up their household gods in front.' 13 If they have towns, they will therefore
also have land. It is easy to see what follows now: they plough the land and
plant it, which is done for the sake of food. Therefore they are mortal.

14 This argument also works in the other direction. For if they don't have
land, then they don't have tow ns either, and if no towns, then no houses, and
if no houses, then no copulation, and if no copulation, then no female sex.
But we see that among the gods there are females. Therefore they are not
gods. 15 U ndo the logic if you can! The propositions go in such a sequence
that this simply has to be the conclusion.

16 No one will undo the fol I owing argument either: of the two sexes, one
is stronger and one weaker (the stronger ones are the males, and the feebler
the females). B ut feebleness is not a feature of a god: neither therefore is the
female sex. 17 To this can be added the conclusion of the previous chain of
logic above, that because there are females among the gods, they are not
gods.

Stoic allegory; divine misfortune and scandal

17.1Thisis why the Stoics understand the gods differently, and because they
do not entirely see what is really involved, they try to link the gods with their
theory of the natural world. Cicero adopted that line, expressing the fol lowing
view upon the gods and their cults [N .D. 2.70]: 2 'Do you see then how our
thinking has been diverted from things physical, where good and useful
discoveries can be made, to gods which are bogus and factitious? This has

113 Sen. F93, 206 (Vottero). In AD 9 Augustus enacted through the consuls M . Papius and
Q. Poppaeus inter alia that men over sixty should not marry women of child-bearing age; in
R oman I aw fathers and mothers of three or more chi I dren w ere favoured inanumberofw ays.
For the details seeTreggiari (1991), 60-80. For infibulation (theclosing of the sexual organs by
a clasp or buckle) see Celsus 7.25.3.

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

made for mistakes in opinion, disturbing errors, and superstitions fit for old
women. We know gods by their shape and age and by their dress and decora¬
tion, not to mention their families, marriages and kinships; the whole thing
has been reduced to the measure of human frailty.’ 3 Nothing could be put
more plainly and soundly. The prince of Roman philosophy, the holder of a
most important priesthood, maintains that the gods are bogus and factitious,
testifying that their cults are superstitions fit for old women, and he protests
that people are entangled in mistaken opinions and disturbing errors. 4 The
whole of book Three of de Natura Deorum is a total subversion of all cults.
W hat more can we do? Have we the power to outdo Cicero in eloquence?
Scarcely; but because he did not know the truth, he lacked faith, something
he admits quite straightforwardly when he says [N ,D. 1.60] he could more
easily say what does not exist than what does: that is, that he knows what is
false and does not know what is true. 5 it is plain therefore that those con¬
sidered to be gods were men; consecration of their memory came after
death. Hence their diversity of age and the individuality of their images,
because they all had their likenesses done in the clothes and at the age of the
moment when death took them.

6 Let us please consider the anguish of the gods who were unlucky. Isis
lost her son, 114 and Ceres her daughter; Latona was driven out and harried all
over the world, only with difficulty finding a little island to give birth on. 7 The
mother of the gods fell in love with a pretty youth, and when she caught him
with a paramour, she castrated him and made him a eunuch, and that is why
his ritual is celebrated even now by the priests called Galii. 115 J uno perse¬
cuted her brother's paramours so fiercely because she could not get pregnant
by him herself. 8 'The island of Samos,’ writesVarro, 'was previously called
Parthenia because there J uno grew up and there she married J upiter. Hence
her very famous and ancient temple on Samos and the statue that shows her
in wedding dress, and the annual ceremony in her honour conducted like a
wedding.' If then she grew up, if she was first a girl and then a wife, anyone
who fails to realise she was human is admitting a bovine stupidity. 9 The
indecency of Venus is beyond words, prostituting herself to the lust of one
and all, not only gods but also men. She it was who bore Harmonia as a
result of M ars’ famous rape of her, and by M ercury she had H ermaphroditus,
who was born bisexual. Byjupiter she had Cupid, by Anchises Aeneas, by

114 Her husband. L. repeats the error of M inucius Felix (22.1).

115 L. refers to the tale of Cybele, whom Romans identified with Rhea, and A tti s. The G all i
are the eunuch cult officials of the G reat M other. N o Roman citizen was permitted to hold these
posts. See D.H. 2.19.3-5; see also 21.16 below.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

Butes Eryx; only with Adonis did she fail, because he was gored to death by
a boar while still a boy. 10 A sit says in the Sacred FI i story, she started prosti¬
tution, and promoted it on Cyprus as a way the women could make money
from public hire of their bodies: she required it of them to avoid herself being
seen as the only wicked woman, with a gross appetite for men. 116 11 Is there
a sacred element in her at all, when her liaisons are more numerous than her
bastards?

Even the virgin goddesses were unable to preserve their virginity intact.
W ho are we to think of as mother of Erichthonius? The earth, as the poets
want it to appear? The truth is blatant. 12 When Vulcan had made weapons
for the gods, and J upiter had given him the chance to ask for the reward he
wanted, swearing, as he usually did, by the lake below that he would refuse
him nothing, the lame smith asked for wedding with M inerva. 13 J upiter
Best and Greatest, bound by the force of his oath, could not at this point say
no, but he did advise M inerva to object and defend her chastity. In the
struggle that developed they say thatVulcan ejaculated on to the soil, and so
Erichthonius was born, and his name was given him G 'from Erisand Chthon',
strife and soil, that is. 14 Then why did the virgin goddess entrust the three
virgin daughters of Cecrops with that child, shut up with a snake in a sealed
box? 117 Patent incest, in my opinion, which simply could not be glossed
over. 15 The other goddess had almost lost her admirer when he was 'torn to
bits by bolting horses' [Verg. A. 7.767]; to heal the youth she called on that
expert doctor Asclepius, and when he was healed, she hid him [774-77] 'in
a secret place, removing him to the grove of the nymph Egeria, where he
could live out his days alone and unknown in Italian woods, having changed
his name to Virbius.' 118 16 What is the meaning of all this loving care and
attention? W hy the 'secret place'? W hy the distant banishment, whether to a
woman or to solitude? And why the change of name? Finally, why such a
fierce anathema on the horses? W hat does al I this i ndicate except conscious¬
ness of rape and a very unmaidenly passion? 17 That was plainly the reason
why she went to so much trouble for so faithful a youth who had refused to
serve his amorous stepmother.

116 Enn. Euhem. fr. 12 (Vahlen) =Warmington p. 430.

117 The story first occurs in Eur. Ion, 267-74.

118 The'other goddess' is Artemis, or Diana, and the'admirer' Hippolytus. After his death
(see Eur. H ipp.) he was translated to Italy and identified with a minor local deity, Virbius, at
Nemi, as narrated in Callimachus' Aetia. L. presumably derived the story from Varro's Aetia.
See Horsfall (2000), ad loc.

100

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Deification of benefactors

l&lAt this point we must also rebut those who do not just admit that gods
weremadeoutof men but even glory in it, in order to praise them, either, like
Hercules, becauseof hisvirtue, or for their gifts, likeCeresand Bacchus, or
for the skills they make available, like Aesculapius and M inerva. 2 The
silliness and impropriety of all this - of people staining themselves with
wickedness they could not remove and becoming enemies of the true God,
and spurning him to take up cults of the dead - I will demonstrate item by
item.

3 They say it is virtue that lifts a man to heaven: not the virtue that the
philosophers speak of, which is a spiritual good, but our physical virtue,
often called bravery. Since it was outstanding in Hercules, they think he
deserved immortality. 4 No one is so stupidly silly as to think physical force
is a divine, or even a human, good, when mere animals have greater, and
when itisoften undone by a si ngl e i 11 ness orbroughtto collapse by mere old
age. 5 That is why Hercules himself did not want to be healed and to grow
old when he saw his muscles deformed by ulcers, in case he should ever look
reduced or misshapen compared with his former self. 6 People thought he
had ascended into heaven off the pyre on which he cremated himself alive,
and in utterly witless admiration of his deeds they recorded and commem¬
orated them in statuary and pictures so that reminders should live on forever
of the stupidity of those who believed that murder of wild animals made
gods.

7 Perhaps, however, this is the fault of the Greeks. They have always
exaggerated the importance of trivialities. 8 But are our Romans any wiser?
They despise athletic excellence because it doesn't impinge anyway, but a
king's power, because of its tendency to cut a broad swathe, they so admire
that they think bold and belligerent leaders belong in the company of the
gods, and the only path to immortality is leading armies, ravaging other
people's land, wiping out cities, destroying towns and either slaughtering
free people or forcing them into slavery. 119 9 Presumably the more people
they have oppressed, robbed and killed, the more famous and glorious they
think they are: they are deceived by a sort of sham glory and label their
wicked deeds with a tag saying virtue. 10 I would rather people made gods
for themselves from the slaughter of animals than have them endorse an
immortality as bloodily got as that. If you cut the throat of one man, you are
treated as contagiously evil, and no one thinks it right for you to be admitted

119 Cf. 6.6.18-20 below.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

101

into a god's house here on earth; but the man who has slain his tens of
thousands, soaking the fields in gore and fouling rivers, is let into heaven,
not just into temples. 11 In E nni us A fri canus speaks as follows [var. 23]: 'If
it is right for any man to climb to the tracts of the heavenly ones, then the
great gate of heaven lies open for me alone’ 120 - because, of course, he had
wiped out a large fraction of humanity. 12 0 whata darknessforyou to work
in, Africanus - or rather, for you the poet! For it was the poet who thought
that ascent into heaven lay open to men by way of blood and slaughter. 13
Even Cicero allied himself to such nonsense. 'It is so indeed, Africanus,' he
said; 'that same door lay open also to FHercules.' 121 As if he himself were
doorkeeper of heaven when it happened, of course!

14 I cannot make up my mind whether I think it lamentable or ludicrous
to see serious, educated men, men wise in their own eyes, bobbing up and
down in such a sorry storm of error. 15 If this is the virtue that makes us
immortal, I’d rather die than be cause of death to as many as possible. 16 If
immortality can only be delivered through blood, what will happen in a
universal concord? That will certainly be a possibility if people are willing
to abandon their destructive and wicked passions and become innocent and
just. 17 Will no one be worthy of heaven then? Will virtue perish because
man has no chance to ruin his fellow? Those whose greatest boast is the
wrecking of civilisations won't endure a general peace: they will smash and
bash and do acts of untold violence, breaking the terms on which human
society works, in order to be able to have some enemy they can wipe out
with more cruelty than they persecuted him in the first place.

Let us now proceed to the rest of it. 18 The title of gods came to Ceres
and Bacchus for the gifts they gave. I can show from sacred literature that
people were using wine and bread before those offspring of Caelus and
Saturn existed; nevertheless, let us pretend that they discovered them. 19 Can
it really seem that gathering grain, grinding it and teaching bread-making, or
picking grapes, pressing them and making wine, is greater or more signi¬
ficant than creating the very grain and vines and making them sprout from
the soil? 20 Even if God had left creation for men to discover, all things are
still his, inevitably: he it is who gave mankind both the wisdom to discover
and the things to be discovered.

21 The arts are also said to have produced immortality for their dis¬
coverers, as medicinehasforAesculapiusand metalwork forVulcan. In that

120 Because Seneca, Ep. 108.33, cites these words and ascribes them to Cicero, they are
normally classed as a fragment of Cic. Rep. (Ziegler, rep.).

121 See Monat (1986), 185 n.2.

102

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

case weshould also be worshipping the teachers of dry-cleaning and cobbling.
W hy is the inventor of pottery not honoured? Is it because your rich men do
not esteem Samian ware? 22 There are other arts too whose inventors have
greatly benefited human life: why have temples not been granted also to
them? 23 Oh but of course - M inerva invented all them, and that is why
craftsmen pray to her. So theirs are the grubby hands that have raised her into
heaven. 24 Is there good reason why anyone should neglect him who set out
the earth with living creatures and set the sky with stars and lights, to
worship instead the one who taught the setting of a loom? 25 What about the
one who taught the healing of bodily wounds? Can he be more significant
than the one who gave those very bodies their form and their pattern of sense
and sight, and even planned and grew the very herbs and the other material
that constitute the art of healing?

l&lSomeonewill doubtless argue that both this God most high who created
all things and those gods who helped a bit each deserve their own due
veneration. 2 First: it never has happened, and it never can happen, that one
who worships them also worships him; because if he is granted the same
distinction of worship that other gods have, then he is not being worshipped
at all: worship of him entails the belief that he is the one and only God. 3 The
master poet proclaims [Verg. A. 6.663, 7.772-73] a place in the underworld
for all those who 'civilised life by the skills they discovered’ including the
one who 'discovered that potent art of healing and was thrust down to the
waters of Styx with a lightning-stroke’, so that we recognise how powerful
the father is who can wipe out even gods with his thunderbolts. 4 Perhaps
some clever people were using the following argument: since a god cannot
be destroyed by thunderbolt, clearly it did not happen. Rather, since it did
happen, clearly he was not a god but a man. 5 The lie the poets tell is one of
category, not fact: they were afraid of bad reactions if they affronted public
opinion with admission of the truth. 6 But if people are themselves agreed
that gods were made out of men, why do they not then believe their poets
whenever they tell them of gods being exiled, wounded and killed, and
fighting and committing adulteries? 7 Thus we may understand that they
could not have become gods on any terms at all because they weren't good
even as men and they did in their lives those deeds which give birth to
everlasting death.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

103

Gods of Rome

2QlNow that I have spoken of international cults, I come to those of the
Romans. The she-wolf that suckled Romulus is the recipient of divine
honours. I could put up with that if she was the animal whose shape she
takes. 2 But Livy is our source for the fact that she is a representation of
Larentina, and not of Larentina's physical form but of her intentions and
behaviour. 122 She was the wife of Faustulus, and because she made her body
cheaply available the countryfolk called her She-wolf: that is, prostitute.
(Hence the word for a brothel. 123 ) 3 The Romans presumably followed the
Athenian example in shaping her so; in Athens the tyrant was killed by a
prostitute cal led L ioness; because it was forbidden for a statue of a prostitute
to be erected in a temple, they set up a likeness of the animal whose name
she bore. 124 4 The A thenians made thei r memorial out of the woman's name,
and the Romans theirs out of her profession. There is even a day devoted to
her name, and a festival called the Larentinalia.

5 Sheisnottheonly prostitute the Romans worship. There is also Faula,
who, writesVerrius, 125 was H ercules' moll. What is our opinion to be now of
an immortality that even prostitutes can achieve? 6 Flora made a great
fortune plying as a prostitute; she made the people her heirs and left them a
sum of money: out of the annual interest on it her birthday was to be
celebrated by provision of games, called the Floralia. 126 7 The senate thought
it wicked, and so resolved to make an interpretation of her name which
would lend some respectability to a matter of shame. They pretended she
was the goddess in charge of flowers, and that she was to be propitiated so
that the fruit on trees or vines would set and develop successfully. 8 Working
to the same pattern, Ovid in Fasti [5.195ff.] told of a notable nymph called
Chloris: she was married to Zephyrus and received as her husband's
wedding gift the privilege of power over all the flowers. 9 The tale is told
fairly enough, but belief in it is not right or proper; when we are looking for
truth, pretence of that sort ought not to deceive us. 10 So, the games are
celebrated in obedience to the memory of a strumpet with all manner of
loose behaviour. Apart from a verbal licence which lets off a torrent of
obscenity, at popular entreaty the women even take off their clothes; they

122 Cf. Livy 1.4.

123 She-wolf: in Latin, lupa. Brothel: in Latin, lupanar.

124 Cf. Pliny, Nat. 7.87.

125 M. Verrius Flaccus (c. 55 BC-AD 20), a freedman hired by Augustus as tutor to his
grandsons, was a distinguished scholar; his major work was de Verborum Significatione.

126 See Scullard (1981), 110-11.

104

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

then perform like actors on stage, making suggestive movements of their
bodies in public view till the eyes of lust are satisfied.

11 The image of Cloacina was found in the Great Drain 127 and was
dedicated by Tati us. He named it from the place of its discovery because he
did not know whose statue it was. Panic and Paleness were given a form and
cult by Tull us Hostilius. 12 I can only say of him that he deserved to have his
gods'very present’ - as the prayer is usually put. What M . M arcel I us did in
his dedication of Honour and Virtue 128 differs from Tull us' consecration in
decency of title, but it is the same in fact. 13 With a similar empty-headedness
the senate gave divine status to M ind. If they had had a mind between them,
they would never have set up that sort of cult.

14 Cicero says that 'Greece adopted the big, bold idea of installing
images of Cupids and Loves in the gymnasia.’ 129 Obviously he was flatter¬
ing Atticus, or else teasing him as a close friend. 15 'Big idea' is not the
proper phrase for it, nor even 'idea' at all. It was the disgracefully and
deplorably immoral scheme of people prostituting their own sons, in whom
they ought to have been developing a sense of decency, to the lusts of young
men; in effect, they wanted their sons to worship gods of debauchery, in
places moreover where their naked bodies are in full view of perverts and at
a time of life when in their innocence and ignorance they can tumble into
traps and get ensnared before they can look after themselves. 16 Is it any
surprise that Greece is a source of universal corruption, when vice itself is a
part of religion, and isnot shunned but actually worshipped? That is why he
added his own opinion, as if he were outdoing the Greeks in good sense
[Leg. 2.28]: 'it is virtue, and not vice, that should be held sacred.' 17 If you
accept that, my dear Cicero, don't you see that the vices will gatecrash the
virtues because bad clings to good and has greater influence on human
minds? If you say vices are not to be treated as holy, the reply will be -
G reece does not change - that gods are worshi pped some for the good they
do and some against the bad they do. That is the regular argument of people
who treat their evils as gods, as the Romans treat mildew and fever. 130 18 If
then vices are not to be made holy, and I agree with you, then neither are

127 Drain: in Latin cloaca.

128 L. refers to the temple of Honor et Virtus just outside the Porta Capena. It was first
dedicated by a Fabius M aximus and later rededicated by M. Claudius M arcellus in 205 BC,
after being vowed by his father M. Claudius M arcellus the conqueror of Syracuse.

129 Clc. Leg. fr. 3 (Ziegler, leg.).

130 Robigo, the mildew on wheat, is warded off by the ceremonies of 25 April (Ovid, Fast.
4.905ff.); Febris, fever, had a temple on the Palatine (Cic. Leg. 2.28; l\l .D. 3.63; Sen. Apoc. 6.1).

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

105

virtues. Virtues have no intelligence or sensations of their own, and they are
not for confinement within a house or shrine of mud: they belong in the
heart, and are to be keptwithin; if they wereoutside, they might prove false.
19 I therefore reject with scorn that famous rule of yours expressed as
follows [Leg. 2.19]: 'Including those qualities that granted them though
human their rise to heaven: mind, virtue, piety and trust; and let there be
shrines to those glories.' B ut these qualities are inseparable from a person. If
they are to have a cult, it must happen inside the person, 20 whereas if they
are outside you, what is the point of a cult of what you do not have? It is
virtue, not an image of virtue, that needs cultivation, and the cultivation is
not to be done through sacrifice of any sort or incense or regular litanies, but
by the will alone and by determination. 21 What else is a cult of virtue than
getting it by heart and holding on to it? As soon as an individual starts to
want it, he achieves it, and this is the only cultivation of virtue that there is:
the only religion and worship to keep to is that of the one and only God.

22 What is the point, my dear clever Cicero, of dumping superfluous
buildings on land that could serve human need? Why appoint priests to
worship things empty of all response? Why sacrifice victims? Why spend so
much money on making or worshipping images? 23 A temple of greater
strength and pureness is the human heart: so give that temple what it needs;
fill that temple with true divinity. 24 These bogus dedications entail an inevit¬
able consequence: people who worship virtues in that way, who go for images
and shadows of virtues, that is, cannot obtain the things that are really true.

25 There is thus no virtue in anyone; vice is master everywhere. There is
no trust, since people grab what they can for themselves; there is no sense of
duty, si nee greed spares neither parents nor family and lust resorts to poison
and the knife; there is no peace and concord, since war rages openly and
even private enmities are mad enough for blood; there is no shame, si nee lust
runs loose in man and woman alike, corrupting every act of the body. 26 And
even so, people continue to worship what they shun and hate. They worship
with incense and fingertips what they ought to worship with their inmost
hearts, and the whole mistake arises from their ignorance of the chief and
supreme good.

27 W hen the Gauls took Rome, and the people were under siege on the
Capitol, they strung their catapults with their womenfolk’s hair; then they
dedicated a temple to Venus the Bald. 131 28 They do not see how stupid their

131 Vegetius, mil. 4.9. The traditional date for the capture of Rome by the Gauls is 390 BC.
See Livy 5.35.4-49.7.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

cults are even from the fact that they mock them with such silliness. 29 Per¬
haps the Spartans were their example for making gods out of events. The
Messenians were under siege; they tricked their besiegers, slipped out
without being noticed, and sped off to plunder Sparta, but were routed and
put to flight by the Spartan women. 30 The Spartan men meantime had
realised their enemies' deception and werein pursuit. But their womenfolk,
duly armed, had come out a considerable way. They met. When the women
saw their menfolk preparing to fight, they thoughtthey were the M essenians,
and stripped themselves naked. 31 The men then recognised their wives, and
the sight aroused them sexually. Armed as they were, they grappled with
them, quite promiscuously, sincetherewasnotimeto make distinctions, 32 just
as they had done as young men on a previous mission when their wives were
girls, and the Partheniae were born as a consequence. 132 To record the event
they erected a temple and a statue to Venus under Arms; though the cause
was still poor, it seems a little better to dedicate a Venus under Arms than a
Venus Bald.

33 At the same time too, an altar was built for J upiter the Baker. J upiter
had advised the besieged Romans in a moment of rest to take all the grain
they had, to make it into bread and to throw the bread into the enemies'
camp; if that were done, the siege would be raised, as the Gauls would
despair of bringing Rome down by starvation. 133 3 4 This is a mockery of
religion. If I were speaking in defenceof itall, I should make a fierce protest
about the contempt of the divine spirit which is produced by these vulgar
labels, and about the ridicule it leads to. 35 You have to laugh at a goddess
F ornax - or at I east, at educated people busy celebrati ng a F ornacal i a. 134 You
have to guffaw when you hear of a goddess M uta. This is the one, they say,
who ismother of theLares, called LaraorLarunda. 135 What possible use to
a worshipper is a goddess who cannot speak?

36 There is also the cult of Caca, who told Hercules his cattle had been
stolen: she achieved divinity by betraying her brother; and there is Cunina,
who watches babies in their cradles and wards off the evil eye; and there is
Stercutus, 136 who introduced the practice of dunging the fields; and there is
Tutinus, on whose lap sit blushing brides-to-be, so that it looks as if Tutinus

132 For the Partheniae, see Strabo 6.3.2-3.

133 Cf. Livy 5.48.4; Ovid, Fast. 6.349ff.

134 Ovid, Fast. 2.525-32.

135 Ovid, Fast. 2.583-616.

136 So speltin M SS R and S (and in Pliny, Nat. 17.50); Sterculus in most others. The three
names Caca, Cunina and Stercutus all evoke excrement.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

107

had first go attheirsexual charms; and there are a thousand other wonders of
the religious world: the people who adopt them for worship are sillier than
we say the Egyptians are, and the Egyptians worship some really monstrous
and ludicrous images. 37 Yet even those images have some form. What about
worshipping a rough and shapeless stone and calling it Terminus? This is the
stone that Saturn ate instead of eating J upiter, so they say. It deserves its
distinction. 38 When Tarquin wanted to build the Capitol, numerous gods
had little shrines there already. He inquired of them by augury whether they
would giveplacetoj upiter. All therestdid; only Terminus stayed put. Hence
the poet’s phrase 'the Capitol's unmoving rock.’ 137 3 9 That is a good
measure of the might of J upiter: he was resisted by a stone. Perhaps it relied
upon the fact that it had freed him from the paternal throat. 40 That is why,
when the Capitol was built, a hole was left in the roof overTerminus, so that
for not giving way he had a free sight of the heavens, something not enjoyed
by those who thought a stone enjoyed it. 41 Terminus is also the object of
public prayer as the god who guards territory, being not just a stone but from
time to time a fencepost. What can you say of people who worship that sort
of thing, except that they themselves are the sticks and stones?

Cults bloody and comic

2LlSo much for the gods who get worshipped: now for a few words on their
rituals and their mysteries. In Cyprus Teucer sacrificed a human victim to
J upiter, and passed the practice on to his descendants; 138 on Hadrian’s orders
it has lately been suppressed. 2 A mong theTauri, a savage and inhuman race,
there was a law that foreign arrivals should be sacrificed to Diana, and that
persisted for a long period of time. 3 The Gauls used to placate Esus and
Teutates with human blood. 139 Even the people of Latium were not exempt
from this cruelty: in our own day J upiter Latiaris is still worshipped with
human blood. 140 4 W hat good can these gods be asked for by people who
sacrifice like that? W hat can such gods give to the people whose sufferings

137 Verg. A. 9.448.

138 Cf. Verg. A. 3.118.

139 Cf. Caes. Gal. 6.16; Lucan 1.444-46.

140 Cf. Porph. abst. 2.56.9, close to L. in time: see Clark (2000), 161 n. 362. M ore probably,
however, L. had in mindTert. apol. 9.5ff.; Scorp. 7.6; M in. Fei. 30.4. The theme was a common
one in Christian apologetic: see Rives (1995), esp. 75-77. The attribution of human sacrifice to
the worship of Jupiter Latiaris probably arose out of a (deliberate?) confusion with the
gladiatorial games held in his honour in the context of the great Latin festival. So Rose (1927).

108

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

are the offering? In the case of barbarians there is no great surprise: their
religion goes with their morality; but we have always boasted of our
civilised and humane ways with special emphasis: are we not shown up by
these sacrilegious offerings as even nastier? 5 People who give up on their
humanity despite the advantage of a I i beral educati on deserve thei r name for
wickedness far more than those whose lack of education tips them into
wicked deeds from ignorance of good. 6 It appears, however, that the ritual
of sacrificing human beings is old, since Saturn has been worshipped in
Latium with the same sort of offering; the man was notin fact killed at the
altar but was thrown into theTi ber off the M ulvian bridge. 141 7 It was done,
according to Varro, in obedience to an oracle: the last verse of the response
goes as follows, 2 'Send heads to Hades and to Father, man' (that is, a human
being). Because of the obvious ambiguity, Saturn is usually sent both a torch
and a human being. 142 8 Sacrifice of that sort is said to have been abolished
by Hercules on his way back from Spain, but the ceremony survived, with
model men of straw being thrown in instead of real, as Ovid explains in
Fasti [5.629-32], 'Until the Ti ry nthi an hero came to theselands, the dismal
rite was performed every year, it is said, in the Leucadian manner. He flung
Romans of straw into the water; following Hercules' example unreal bodies
are still thrown in.’ 9 The ceremony is performed by the Vestal Virgins, as
Ovid also says [621-22]: 'At that time the priestess also observes the custom
of flinging from the wooden bridge bulrush models of men of olden time.’
As for the children who also used to be sacrificed to Saturn because of his
hatred of Jupiter, I cannot think what to say: 10 how could men be so
barbarously cruel as to use the word sacrifice for child murder, which is a
foul and accursed crime throughout humanity? Without any regard for the
duty of love they destroyed lives of tenderest innocence, a time of life
especially dearto parents, and in their savagery they outdid the cruelty of all
wild beasts - and yet animals love their young! 11 W hat incurable folly!
W hat more could those gods of theirs do for them i n thei r greatest wrath than
they do already when feeling favourable? They stain their worshippers with

141 The bridge was the Pons Sublicius. See L e G all (1953), 83. Constantine's victory in 312
happens to have been won at Rome's M ulvian or M ilvian bridge.

142 Orac. Apoll, fr. This oracle is given in fuller form in D.H. 1.19 and in M acr. Sat. 1.7.28.
Both sources attribute it to Dodona, and M acrobius (at least) derived it from Varro. In the Greek
man, human being, is phota (acc. sing.). There is also a word phos, light, light of a torch, with
a different declension. Confusion of the two was helped by the fact that skotos, darkness, has an
adjective skoteinos; phos has photeinos, probably formed analogically. The adjectives may be
found paired as early as Xenophon: Mem. 3.10.1 and 4.3.4.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

109

murder, they stun them with loss of their children, and they strip them of
human sensibility. 12 What can be sacred to these people? If they commit
such awful crimes at the altars of their gods, what would they do in places
not sacred? 13 In his Satirical Stories Pescennius Festus 143 says that 'the
Carthaginians used to make human sacrifices to Saturn, and when they were
conquered by Agathocles king of Sicily they assumed the god was angry
with them; they therefore sacrificed two hundred children of noble birth in
extra careful expiation.' 14'Such evil has it been within the power of religion
to inspire: criminal and ungodly deeds have been its frequent product’ [Lucr.
1.101, 83], 15 Whose interests were the madmen serving with such a sacri¬
fice? They killed as great a fraction of the community as even the victorious
Agathocles probably did.

16 No less mad in comparison with that sort of offering must surely be
those public ceremonies, some of them belonging to the Great M other, in
which men slice off their own manhood - by amputation of sex they become
neither men nor women 144 - and some of them belonging to Virtus (also
called B el Iona), in which the priests offer not others’ blood in sacrifice but
their own. 17 They cut their upper arms and run round in a trance, completely
mad, waving a drawn sword in either hand. Quintilian in his Fanatic puts it
very well: 'If a god wants that, he’s an angry god.’ 145 18 Are these offerings
at all? Isn't it better to live like animals than to worship gods so godless, so
profane and bloodthirsty? 19 We will discuss in their proper place, however,
the sources of such mistaken and wicked enormities.

Meantime let us look also at all the other practices which are not
criminal, in case our enthusiasm to attack makes it look as if we are picking
out the bad bits. 20There are ceremonies in honour of Egyptian Isisto deal
with the loss of her young son 146 and his finding. FHer priests first depilate
their bodies, and then beat their breasts and wail, just as she did herself when
she lost the boy. Then a boy is produced, as if he had been found, and the
grief turns into joy. So Lucan: 147 'Osiris, never searched for long enough.'
They are always losing and finding him. 21 In the ritual, then, an image is
produced of an event that actually happened, which shows (if we have our

143 Otherwise unknown. Agathocles was king of Syracuse from 361/0 until his
assassination in 289/8.

144 See note on 17.7 above.

145 [Quint.] Decl, fr.; cf. Ritter pref. Ill n.

146 See note on 17.6 above. Her husband's name was Osiris.

147 Not Lucan: L. is mistaken. The phrase is from Ovid, Met. 9.693; but see Lucan 8.831-
33.

110

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

wits about us) that she was a mortal, a woman without family unless she
found her only son. That particular point was not lost on the poet: when
young Pompey hears of his father’s death, he speaks as follows [Luc. 9.158-
9]: 'I shall unwind Isis, that deity of the nations, from her tomb, and I shall
scatter Osiris abroad in his linen wraps.' 22 This is the Osiris whom people
call Serapis, or Serapides. Names usually get changed when the dead are
deified, in case anybody should think they were human, I suppose. 23 After
his death Romulus became Quirinus, Leda became Nemesis, Circe M arica;
after her plunge into the sea, I no became Leucothea and also M ater M atuta,
while her son M elicertes became Palaemon and Portunus. 148

24 The ceremonies for Ceres at Eleusis are not very different. In Egypt
the boy Osiris is pursued by his mother’s lamentations and at Eleusis Proser¬
pina is seized for an incestuous wedding with her uncle, and her ritual is
celebrated with tossing of lighted torches because Ceres is said to have
sought Proserpina in Sicily with brands lit from the summit of Etna. 149 25 In
L ampsacus the propitiatory victim for Priapus is a donkey; the reason for the
sacrifice is given in Fasti as follows: 150 all the gods had met for the festival
of the Great M other; they had eaten their fill and were spending the night in
fun. Vesta lay down on the ground and fell asleep. Priapus laid siege to her
sleep and to her honour, but she was woken by an untimely bray from the
donkey ridden by Silenus, and her attacker’s desires were disappointed; 26 that
is why the people of L ampsacus have their custom of sacrificing a donkey to
Priapus, to give the god his revenge, while in Rome the donkey is crowned
with bread in a ceremony of the Vestals to celebrate honour preserved.
27 What could be more shameful and scandalous than to have Vesta’s virgin¬
ity owed to an ass? Oh, but the story is a poet’s invention, they say. 28 Then
is there more truth in the story told by the authors 151 of P haenomena when in

148 Quirinus is thought to be a deity of Sabine origin: he is both a war god and a founding
god associated with agriculture. The word comes from co-uiri-um, assembly of men; hence
Quirites as a name for the citizens of Rome. Leda, a figure of myth, and divine Nemesis were
each fertilised by Zeus. Circe, daughter of the Sun, is identified with M arica, mother of Latinus:
cf. Verg. A. 12.164 with Serv. ad loc. Ino, or Leucothea, is associated with Mater Matuta,
mother of the Dawn, whose temple was in the forum boarium at Rome; her son M elicertes,
flung into the sea when she was pursued by Athamas, was rescued by a dolphin, secured a new
name Paiaemon and was honoured with the Isthmian games; Portunus was worshipped in the
Tiber harbour near Rome.

149 Cf. Cic.Ver. 5.106.

150 6.319-48.

151 The authors probably known to L. who wrote Phaenomena were Aratus, Cicero and
Germanicus; see note on 11.64 above. None of the works survives entire.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

111

speaking of the two stars of the sign of the Crab which the Greeks call
Donkeys they say they were the donkeys ridden by father Bacchus when he
could not cross the river, and as a reward he gave one of them the power of
human speech? And so a competition developed between him and Priapus
over thesizeof their members, and Priapuslost, and killed thewinnerin his
anger! 29 That is a much sillier story. Oh, but the poets can do what they like,
they say. Well, I’m not going to open up so ugly a mystery, nor strip Priapus
naked, in case something worth a laugh shows up. Let’s cal I it poetical fancy
then. Yes, but contrived of a necessity, to cover up some greater nasti ness. 30
So let's find out what it is. Oh, it’s plain enough, surely. A bull is sacrificed
to the M oon because it has horns like the moon, and [Ov. Fast. 1.385-86]
'Fly peri on girt with sunbeams is given a horse by Persisso that a speedy god
is not offered a laggard victim.’ So, because a donkey has a sexual organ of
enormous size, no fitter victim could be found for that prodigy Priapus than
one which could mimic the god to whom it is sacrificed.

31 Near Lindos, a town on Rhodes, there is a ceremony for Hercules,
and its ritual is very different from all others, since it is conducted not amid
what the Greeks cal I G goodspeech 152 butwith curses and execrations, and if
at any point during the solemn ritual someone lets fall a good word, even
unawares, it is treated as profanation. 32 The reason given for this (if, of
course, there can beany reason in such nonsense) is as follows: 33 Hercules
had arrived in Lindos and was starving; he spied a ploughman at work, and
started to ask him to sell him an ox. The ploughman said that it was quite
impossible; all his hopes of tilling the soil depended upon the pair of oxen.
34 So Hercules exercised his usual violence: because he had been unable to
get one of the oxen, he took both. When the poor ploughman saw his oxen
being sacrificed, he avenged his loss with curses, which was very acceptable
to our refined and urbane hero; 35 as he prepared the feast for his compan¬
ions and devoured someone else's cattle, he listened to the man’s bitterest
objurgations with hoots of laughter. 36 But when the decision was made
to offer divine honours to Hercules in admiration of his virtue, an altar
was set up for him by the people of Lindos, and he called it the Ox-yoke,
from what he had done; a yoke of oxen was to be sacrificed at it, just like
the ones he stole from the ploughman, and the ploughman was himself
appointed priest by Hercules, and told always to use the same curses in
carrying out the sacrifice: he had never dined, he said, with more enjoy¬
ment. 37 This is now no sacred ceremony but sacrilege. People are treating as

152 Euphemia, 'goodspeech': the safest speech in the presence of the gods was silence.

112

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

holy something which, if it were to occur in any other ceremony, is very
severely punished.

38 As for the rites of Cretan J upiter himself, what else do they reveal
except the way in which he was either stolen from his father or fed? There is
a nanny goat belonging to the nymph Amalthea, which fed the child from its
own udder. Germanicus speaks of the animal in hisAratean poem as follows
[165-68]: 'It is thought to bej upiter’s nurse; if the infant J upiter really did
suck the trusty teats of a Cretan goat, she can prove her suckling’s gratitude
with a bright constellation.' 39 M usaeus says that 'J upiter used this goat’s
hide as his shield when fighting against the Titans.’ 153 Hence the poets’ title
for him of 'goatskin-bearing'. 154 Whatever was done in spiriting the child
away is done in imitation at the ceremony. 40 But his mother's rites also
operate similarly, as Ovid says in Fasti [4.207-14]: 'Steep Ida had been
resounding a long while with clamourings so that the child could wail in
safety from its infant mouth. Some beat shields with sticks and others beat
empty helmets: the Curetes had the one task and the Corybantes the other.
The deed went unobserved, but a replay of it survives: the goddess's devotees
shake rattles of bronze and leather. Instead of helmets they thump cymbals
and instead of shields drums, and a pipe plays Phrygian tunes as it did on the
first occasion.' 41 Sallust rejected this view in its entirety as a fiction of the
poets; he proposed an ingenious interpretation of why the C uretes are said to
have been 'J upiter’s rearers'. It is as follows: 'because they were the first to
grasp divinity, so antiquity, exaggerating as it always does, celebrated them
asj upiter’s rearers.' 155 42 How wrong the learned man was is now cl ear from
the event: if J upiter is the startpoint of the gods and their cults, and if there
were no gods of popular worship before him because the gods to worship
had not yet been born, it is plain that the Curetes were, conversely, the first
not to grasp divinity; they were the cause of the whole mistake and of the
record of the true god disappearing. 43 People ought to have realised from
the mysteries and ceremonies themselves that they were praying to dead
men.

44 I therefore put no pressure on anyone to believe the fictions of the
poets. Anyone who thinks they are lying should consider what the priests

153 M usaeus was often associated with Orpheus; Diodorus Siculus calls him son of
Orpheus (4.25), but Pausanias says son of Antiophemus (10.5.6). Various poems of mystic
inspiration were attributed to him.

154 In Greek aigiochos; the word has probably been misunderstood from early times; of
Zeus it meant 'cloud-driving' or 'storm-riding'.

155 Sal. H ist. 3.60 (M aurenbrecher).

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

113

themselves have recorded, and should ponder the literature that relates to the
ceremonies. He will perhaps find more there than I am mentioning from
which to realise the emptiness, stupidity and falsehood of everything that is
being treated as holy. 45 Anyone who can see what is sense and can lay aside
error will surely laugh at the idiocies of virtual madmen: I mean the people
who prance about in obscene dances or run naked, oiled and garlanded, and
either masked or smeared in mud. 46 W hat can one say about shields now
rotted with age? When they carry them, they think they bear very gods upon
their shoulders. 47 One of the principal examples of pious behaviour is
reckoned to be Furius Bibaculus: 156 though he was praetor, he carried a
shield as his lictors went before him even though by virtue of office he had
exemption from the duty. 48 He wasn’t Furius, but simply raving, if he
thought he did his office any good by such behaviour, and when these things
get done by men of some experience and education, Lucretius is right to
exclaim [2.14-16], '0 foolish 157 human minds, o hearts of blindness! What
a dark and dangerous world it is that encompasses this little lifespan of
ours!’ 49 No one even faintly sane could fail to laugh at such rubbish if he
saw people apparently bereft of their wits treating stuff as serious which
done for a joke would mark the doer as stupid and depraved.

Origin of cults

221AII this nonsense was started and established in Rome by that Sabine
king, grossly entangling a simple and inexperienced folk in new-fangled
superstitions. In order to do so with some authority, he pretended he had
nocturnal meetings with the goddess Egeria. 158 2 There was a cave of great
obscurity in theA rician wood, from which a stream of water flowed all year
round. Here he used to withdraw, with no witnesses present, so that he could
make his bogus claim that he was passing to the people, on the advice of his
goddess wife, rituals that the gods would find very acceptable. 3 No doubt he

156 Furius Bibaculus was praetor in 219 or shortly before. Atthe bidding of his father, head
of the brotherhood of the Salii, he carried the sacred shields though exempt by virtue of his
office. These twelve shields, of figure-of-eight shape, were replicas of the shields that fell from
heaven into the hands of king Numa in a time of plague. They were kept by the Salii in the
shrine of M ars. See Livy 1.20.4 (with Ogilvie, Comm.); V. M ax. 1.1.9 (with clear verbal echoes
in L.).

157 Lucretius' MSS have miseras, 'wretched', not stultas. So too some of L.'s MSS,
probably in correction. Stultas suited L ,'s argument better.

158 For Numa, Romulus' successor who reigned by tradition from 715 to 673, for his
religious reforms, and for his association with Egeria, see Livy 1.21.3.

114

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

wanted to copy the shrewdness of M inos, who withdrew to J upiter's cave,
spent a long time there and then produced his laws as a gift to him from
Jupiter, so that he could enforce the people's obedience not merely by
command but by religious sanction also. 4 It was certainly not difficult to
persuade herdsmen. So he created priests, flamens, Salii and augurs, and
sorted the gods i nto fami I ies, and thus he soothed the savage temper of a new
people and drew them away from war to the pursuit of peace. 5 B ut though
he fooled others he did not deceive himself. A good many years later, when
Cornelius and Baebius were consuls, 159 two stone coffers were found in an
excavation on land belonging to the scribe Petilius under thej aniculum. In
one of them was the body of Numa, and in the other, seven books in Latin on
the rights of the priesthood and seven in Greek on the study of wisdom, in
which he completely undid all religious cults whatever, including the ones
he had set up himself. 6 The matter came before the senate, and the senate
voted for the destruction of the books. The praetor urbanus Q. Petilius
therefore burnt them at an assembly of the people. 7 That was an unintelli¬
gent act. What was the point of the books being burnt when the doubt they
cast on cults was now preserved as the cause of their burning? 8 Every
member of the senate at the time was obviously very stupid: it was quite
possible for the books to be burnt without their content being remembered.
The senators meant to commend to their heirs the piety with which they
protected the religious cults, but their actual legacy was to weaken the
authority of the cults.

9 BeforeNumagavetheRomanstheirstupid religions, Faunuswasatit
in Latium. He established a wicked rite for his grandfather Saturn, honoured
his father Picus along with the gods and declared holy his sister Fenta Fauna,
who was also his wife. Gavius Bassus records 160 that she was 'called Fatua
because she had the same practice of telling the future to women as Faunus
did to men'. 10 Varro writes of her that she 'was of such great modesty that
no male ever saw her or heard her name as long as she lived except her
husband. 11 That is why women sacrifice to her in private and call her the
Good Goddess.' 161 In the book he wrote in Greek, Sextus Clodius reports 162

159 See Livy 40.29, under 181 BC.

160 Hewas a late Republican writer on etymology (de Origine Verborum) and on religion
(de Diis). He relates the name Fatua to the root fa-, speak, whence also fa turn, fate; L. follows
him in the etymology.

161 Cf. Macr. Sat. 1.12.27.

162 Sex. Clodius is probably the grammarian from Sicily who taught Mark Antony. See
Suet. Gramm. 29. For Clodius on Fatua see, more fully, Arnobiusadv. nat. 5.18.

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115

that'she was the wife of Faunus; because she had secretly downed a pitcher
of wine and become drunk, contrary to royal custom and decency, she was
beaten to death by her husband with sticks of myrtle; later, however, he was
sorry for what he had done and could not endure his longing for her, and so
he gave her divine honours; that is why at her ceremony a jar of wine is
offered all wrapped up.' 12 So Faunus too has bequeathed no small sum of
error to posterity; but sensible folk understand. 13 Lucilius mocks the
stupidity of the people who think images are gods in the foil owing lines: 'Fie
shudders at these terrifying Lamias, the inventions of Faunus and Pompilius
Numa: for him everything depends on them. J ust as young children believe
that all statues of bronze are alive and are people, so those people think all
fiction is true, believing that statues of bronze have a heart. It is a painter's
studio, nothing true in it at all, all fiction.' 14 The poet compares stupid
people to children, but I say they are much more short-sighted than that.
Children think that statues are people, whereas the adults think they are
gods. Children take for true what is not so because of their age; adults do so
from stupidity. And children will soon leave off being deceived, whereas
adult folly lasts for ever and expands.

15 The rites of father Bacchus were first brought into Greece by
Orpheus, and he was also first to celebrate them on a mountain in Boeotia
near to Thebes where Bacchus was born; it is called Cithaeron because it
used often to resound to the music of the cithara. 16 The rites in which the
poet himself is torn apart and broken into pieces are still called Orphic; he
lived at much the same time as Faunus. 17 The question of which was the
elder is open to doubt, since Latinus and Priam were kings in the same
period; the same is true of their fathers Faunus and Laomedon. It was in
Laomedon’s reign that Orpheus came to the coast of Ilium with the
Argonauts.

18 Let us go further, and ask who was the absolutely first inventor of
worshipping the gods. 19 In his books of commentary on Pindar, Didymus
says 163 that'M elisseus king of the Cretans was the first to make sacrifice to
the gods and to introduce new rituals and processions of holy objects; he had
two daughters, A malthea and M elissa, who fed the child J upiter with goat’s
milk and honey’ 20 (that is the source of the poet’s tale that bees flew down
and filled the child’s mouth with honey); 'Melissa was appointed by her
father as first priestess of the Great M other, and to this day those who attend
to the Great M other are all called M elissa.’ 21 The Sacred FI istory says that

163 A learned scholar of Alexandria in the 1st cent. BC.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

' after J upiter attained power,’ he developed such an arrogance that'he set up
shrines to himself all over the place.' 164 2 2 As he went round his lands, in
every region that he came to he bound the kings and princes of the peoples to
him by thetieof hospitality and friendship, and when he departed from them
he gave orders for a shrine to be built to him in the name of his host, as if a
memory of the friendship and agreement could be so preserved. 23 On that
basis temples were set up to Jupiter Ataburius and Jupiter Labryandius
(Ataburusand Labryandus were his hosts and his helpers in a war); so too to
J upiter Laprius, J upiter M olio and J upiter Casius and all the others of like
title. It was a very clever idea of his: he acquired for himself divine honours
and for his hosts a name for ever, linked with a religious cult. 24 The kings
were glad therefore, and readily obeyed his rule; in gratitude for the
perpetuation of their names they celebrated the festival with its ritual every
year. 25 Something similar was done in Sicily by Aeneas, when he founded
a city and named it after his hostAcestes, so that in after timeAcestes would
gladly and readily love it, expand it and beautify it. 165 26 In this way J upiter
spread the celebration of his cult throughout the world and made it an
example for everyone else to follow.

27 Whether the ritual of worshipping gods issued from M elisseus, as
Didymus reports, or from Jupiter himself, as Euhemerus says, there is
nevertheless agreement on the time at which gods began to be worshipped.
28 M elisseus was very much the earlier: he brought upj upiter as his grand¬
son, and for that reason it is possible that he established godworship either
before J upiter’s childhood or while he was still a child, the gods being his
charge’s mother, his grandmotherTellus (who was wife of Uranus) and his
father Saturn. The example and pattern he set encouraged J upiter to such
pride in himself that he later had the arrogance to give himself divine
honours.

Gods are recent

23.1 Now we have understood the origin of these silly superstitions, it
remains to compare the lifetimes of those whose memory is so fostered. 2
Theophilus in his book On Times, written for Autolycus, says 166 that 'in his

164 Enn. Euhem. fr. 10 (Vahlen) =Warmington pp. 426-28.

165 SeeVerg. A. 5.746-61.

166 Theoph. Autol. 3.29. He was a Christian apologist of the 2nd century.

BOOK 1: FALSE RELIGION

117

H i story Thai I us says that Bel us, worshipped by Babylonians and Assyrians,
turns out to have been 322 years older than the Trojan war; he was also
contemporary with Saturn, and both grew up at the same time.' 3 That is
sufficiently sound for a rational comparison to be made. Agamemnon who
conducted the Trojan war was J upiter’s great-great-grandson, and Achilles
and Ajax were J upiter's great-grandsons; Ulysses was related in the same
degree, while Priam was more distant <...>. 167 There is a tradition in certain
authors, however, that Dardanus and lasius were sons of Corythus, not of
J upiter; if it were so, he could not have indulged in unnatural practices with
Ganymede as his own great-grandson. 4 If then you allow the appropriate
number of years to the ancestors of those named above, the sum will work.
Si nee the fall of Troy, there have been 1470 years. 5 From our calculation of
the preceding generations it is plain that Saturn’s birth occurred not more
than 1800 years ago, and he was the source of all the gods. Since origin,
reason and duration of all their ceremonies are thus known, proud boasts of
cultic antiquity are not for them to make. 168

6 A few points still remain which would be very effective in proving the
falseness of the cults, but I have decided to end this book now in order not to
exceed the limit. 7 The points need to be developed more fully if we are to
rebut all the apparent obstacles to the truth and be able to bring people who
roam uncertainly in ignorance of good to the way of true worship. 8 The first
step to knowledge isto understand whatiswrong, and the second isto learn
what is right. 9 In this first Institute then, we have exposed what is wrong.
Anyone who has found that useful will now be stimulated to the learning of
what is right, and there is no pleasure for a human being more enjoyable than
that. If he goes forward willing and ready to learn what remains, he will soon
be worthy of the wisdom which abides in heavenly learning.

167 Loss of text is suspected; Priam's relationship needed to be spelt out.

168 For L. on dates, and their derivation from Theophilus, see Nicholson (1985).

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

Aim: to expose and refute error

LI In Book 1, I showed that the cults of the gods were mistaken on the
grounds that the gods were mortals, and when they finished life they yielded
to god-given necessity by dying; the adoption of their various different cults
all over the earth was due to a stupid piece of collaborative self-deception by
men. in case any doubt may remain, however, this second book will expose
the actual source of the errors and will unfold all the reasons why people
were deceived, first into thinking that these men were gods, and then, when
the belief had become inveterate, into persisting in the cults they had so
wickedly adopted.

2 M y desire, 0 emperor Constantine, is to refute these nonsenses and to
lay bare man’s irreligious folly, and so to assert the greatness of the one and
only God by taking on the greater and more useful task of recalling people
from their wicked ways and restoring them to a state of grace with them¬
selves; otherwise they may copy certain philosophers in rating themselves
too low, and in thinking that they were born weak, superfluous, worthless
and utterly futile, a view which drives many to vice.

3 For as long as men think that we are the concern of no god at all, or else
that we shall be nothing after death, they surrender themselves completely to
their desires, and as long as they think they are free to do so, they settle into
deep and thirsty draughts of those pleasures which may run them unaware
into the snares of death. 4 They do not know the point of being human. If
they wanted to grasp it, they would first acknowledge their lord, practise
virtue and justice, not bewilder their souls with earthly fictions, not pursue
the lethal sweetness of their lusts, and they would finally put high value on
themselves and understand that there is more in human beings than appears:
that their power and position cannot be maintained at all without laying
aside wickedness and worshipping their true father. 5 When I meditate, as I
often and properly do, upon the sum of things, I am always astonished that
the greatness of the one and only God, which embraces and governs all
things, has fallen into such oblivion that when it ought to be the only thing
worshipped it is the one thing most neglected, and people themselves have

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

119

been reduced to such blindness that the true and living God takes second
place to the dead: he who is creator of the earth itself yields place to gods
made of earth and buried in earth.

6 This impiety of man could be forgiven even so if the error came
entirely from ignorance of God’s name. But since we often seethe worship¬
pers of gods themselves both acknowledging and preaching a god supreme,
what forgiveness could they possibly expect for their wickedness in failing
to observe the rites of theGod whom itisplain wrong of man notto know?
7 When they swear an oath, when they utter a prayer, when they offer thanks,
it is not J upiter or strings of gods they name, but God: even from reluctant
hearts the truth will out when nature says! 8 But they don't do that when
things are going well. God most slips from mind precisely when men arein
receipt of his goodness and ought to be honouring his divine indulgence. 9 In
fact, they remember God only when some pressing need is upon them: if
threat of war is rumbling, if plague and pest are taking hold, if prolonged
drought denies sustenance to crops, if fierce storms and hail set in, then they
fly to God and ask his help, and pray for him to rescue them. 10 When
tossing at sea in a raging wind, him it is they invoke, him they implore when
victims of some violence, him alone they call to witness when they are
reduced to the ultimate necessity of begging, and plead for food with
prayers; when people ask for the pity of men, they do it in his divine and
unique name. 11 So it is that they never remember God except when in
trouble; once fear departs and their perils recede, off they go with alacrity to
the temples of the gods, pouring them libations, giving them sacrifices and
garlands, 12 without even a word of thanks to the god whom they besought
in their necessity. Prosperity revives their spirit of self-indulgence, and all
vices come of that, including impiety to God. 13 Why should we think this
happens unless we believe there is a perverse power which is always hostile
to truth, which rejoices in human error, whose one perpetual task it is to
spread darkness in the way and to dim people’s minds so that they cannot see
the light, and cannot even look up to heaven and maintain the nature they
were born with?

14 Other living creatures gaze at the ground with their bodies facedown
because they have not been granted reason and intelligence. We stand
upright and gaze aloft by the gift of God our maker. These cults of gods
plainly have no partin human reason because they bend a being of the sky to
worship things of earth. 15 W hen our one and only father was making man
as an intelligent being capable of reason, he raised him up from the ground
and elevated him to contemplation of his maker. This was very well put by a

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

gifted poet [Ovid, M et. 1.84-86]: 'Though all the other animals gaze at the
ground face down, he gave man a visage which faced aloft, and bade him
behold the skies, and uplift his face to the stars.' 16 This is why the Greeks
call man 'anthropos', because he looks upwards. 1 Those who look down and
not up thus deny themselves and forfeit their title of man - unless perhaps
our upright stance is something they think granted to man without a reason.
17 Our heavenwards gaze is simply the will of God unobstructed. The birds
can see the sky, and so can virtually all of dumb creation, butourspecial gift
is to gaze at it standing upright, so that we can seek our faith there, and can
contemplate god whose abode it is in our minds though we cannot with our
eyes. That is certainly not the act of one who worships bronze and stone,
things of earth. 18 It is very wrong that the human mind which is eternal
should be made low when the body which is time-bound is upright; the
whole meaning of our form and stance is simply that the human mind should
look in the same direction as the face, and the human spirit’s duty is to be as
upright as the body is, in imitation of what it is due to command. 19 But
human beings forget their own name and purpose; they cast their gaze down
from on high, and fix it on the ground and fear creations of their own fingers,
as if anything can be greater than its own maker.

Worship of statues is demeaning

21W hat a madness it is then for people either to create what they come to
fear or to fear what they create! 'Oh, it's not the things themselves that we
fear,' they say; 'we fear the things in whose image they are created and in
whose names they are dedicated.’ You fear them, no doubt, because you
think they exist in heaven; indeed, if they are gods, nothing else can be the
case. 2 W hy then do you not raise your eyes to heaven and call upon their
names and worship them with sacrifice openly? Why must you gaze at walls
and timber and stone all the time rather than towards where you think they
are? What is the point of your temples and altars, and of the images
themselves, which are only memorials of men dead or absent? 3 The whole
point of the invention of image-making was precisely to preserve the memory
of those who had been removed by death or distanced by absence.

4 In which group then shall we put the gods? If we put them with the
dead, only a fool would worship them. If we put them with the absent, they

1 L. implies that anthropos was made from the three Greek roots ana, athre- and op-: up-
look-face. See Perrin (1981), 73ff., for the theme (on which L. is very keen); 408 n. 146, on the
etymology.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

121

are still not fit for worship if they cannot see our acts or hear our prayers. 5 And
if absence is impossible for gods who can see and hear everything wherever
they are because they are divine, then their ubiquity makes images of them
superfluous: praying by name to gods who can hear is enough. 6 Oh, but
they are only present when they are by their images. Oh yes? Exactly the
popular belief, that the souls of the dead haunt their graves and their own
physical relics! 7 But once God begins to be around, there is no need of his
image. I mean, if someone gazed a good many times at the picture of a man
living abroad in order to get comfort from it in his absence, if he then went
on gazing at it when the fellow had returned and was around again, would he
seem sane in wanting a picture of him rather than sight of him in person?
Surely not! 8 The picture of a person is plainly needed when he’s not around
and it is superfluous when he is, but in the case of God, whose power and
spirit spread everywhere and can never be absent, a picture is superfluous at
any time.

9 People are actually afraid that if they see nothing there to adore, all
their worship of these gods is vain and empty; that is why they setup statues,
which being likenesses of the dead resemble the dead in lacking the capacity
to feel, 10 whereas the likeness of God who lives for ever should be alive and
capable of feeling. But if that word likeness comes from 'being like', 2 how
can those likenesses be thought like god when they have neither feeling nor
emotion? A likeness of god is not the thing crafted by human hand from
stone or bronze or any other material: man is himself that likeness, because
he feels and reacts and can do so many great deeds.

11 People in their stupidity do not realise that if statues could feel and
react, they would of their own accord adore the person by whom they were
made and finished: had they not been shaped by man, they would still be
rough and untended stoneorraw and shapeless wood. 12 M an isthereforeto
be considered their virtual father: his is the handiwork that gave them birth;
through him they slowly took on form, features and beauty; 13 hence the
craftman’s superiority over his creations. And yet, no one looks up to the
craftsman or reveres him for himself: people fear his creations, as if there
could possibly be more in the work than in the workman. 14 Seneca was
right to say in his books on M orality, 'They worship images of gods, they
pray to them on bended knee, they adore them, they sit or stand by them all
the day long, they throw them a coin or kill them a victim; and though they

2 L. is correctly linking simulacrum, image, with similis, like, resembling, and its noun
similitudo.

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look up at them with such concentration, they despise the craftsmen who
made them. 15 How contrary can you be, to despise the statuary and worship
his statue, not even admitting to table with you the man who made you your
gods!' 3

So what force, what power can the statues have when their maker
doesn’t? He couldn't even give them the powers he did have, of sight, sound,
speech and emotion. 16 Surely no one can be so stupid as to think that a
statue of a god has something in it when the only human thing about it is its
outline anyway. But people don't think of that; they succumb to popular
fancy, and their minds absorb the dye of folly. 17 So sentience reveres the
senseless and wisdom reveres the irrational; life adores the lifeless, and the
heaven-born worship the earthly. 18 What a pleasure then, to stand on some
high eminence where everyone can hear you and shout out that line of Persius
[2.61], '0 spirits bent to earth, empty of heaven', look at the sky instead! Your
own maker God has roused you up to do so! 19 He gave you your upturned
faces, and you bend yourselves to the ground; he set your minds on high and
raised them with their bodies towards their father, and you force them ever
lower, as if you were sorry you weren’t born quadruped. 20 It is not right for
a heavenly being to be levelled with earthly beings that aim at the ground.
W hy strip yourselves of your heavenly blessings and fall flat on the ground
of your own deliberate will? You roll on the earth in your wretchedness,
hunting down below for what you ought to seek above. 21 Those ludicrous,
feeble artefacts of the human hand, shaped out of all manner of stuff, are
nothing but the earth of which they were made. 22 Why grovel to things
beneath you? W hy heap earth upon your heads? Every time you fall to the
ground and humiliateyourselves, you are deliberately drowning yourselves,
condemning yourselves to death, because lower than the earth there is
nothing except death and the underworld.

23 If you were willing to escape that, you would trample the earth in
contempt of it and preserve your natural posture: you were given your upright
stance in order that you could level eyes and mind at your maker. 24 Spurn¬
ing and trampling the earth is simply refusal to worship images because they
are made of earth; so too it is refusal to covet wealth, it is spurning the
pleasures of the body because wealth isearth and so isthe body itself whose
guest we are. In order to live, worship what lives; anyone who consigns
himself and his soul to the dead must die.

3 Sen. F94, 208 (Vottero).

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

123

Even Sceptics participate in cult worship

3.1 But what is the point of haranguing a rough, uneducated mob in this
fashion when we see that even learned and sensible men, despite perceiving
the emptiness of the cults, nevertheless out of some perversity persist in
worshipping those very images they condemn? 2 Cicero realised that people
were praying to deceptions; though he said much of value for the overthrow
of cults, even so he says, 'It should not be argued in public, in case such
argument does away with cults that have been publicly adopted.' 4 3 What is
to be done with a fellow who knows he is off course and then deliberately
trips on the rocks so that all the people stumble, and plucks out his own eyes
so that everyone is blind? H e deserves well neither of those he lets go astray
nor of himself in straying on to the paths of others; above all he fails to use
the gift of his own intelligence to fulfil in action what he realises in his mind:
he sets his foot in the trap in full knowledge and awareness, so that he too is
caught along with all the rest, when his superior understanding should have
been their liberation.

4 If there is any virtue in you, Cicero, why not try to make the people
understand too? It is a task worth all your powers of eloquence: no need to
fear that speech may fail you when the cause is so good; you have often
enough taken on bad causes with fluency and courage. 5 B ut you fear the
cell of Socrates, and no wonder: that is why you dare not take on advocacy
of the truth. Even so it was your duty as a wise man to despise death; it
would be much finer to die for something blessed than for something
accursed; even your Philippics could not have brought you more glory than
sorting out the error of the human race and recalling the minds of men to
health with argument of yours. 6 Suppose, however, we concede a timidity
which ought not to occur in a wise man: why then persist in the same error
yourself? I see you venerating earthly things, things made by human hand;
you know they are empty, and yet you do exactly what is done by people you
say are utterly stupid. 7 What use was it to have seen the truth if you were not
going to defend it or accept it?

Yet even those who know their error are happy in it; all the more so the
ignorant masses, who rejoice in meaningless ceremonies and gawp at
everything like children, delighted by frivolities and enchanted by pretty
images. Being incapableof thinking each thing out for themselves, they fail
to see that nothing visible to mortal eyes is worth worship because it is

4 Cic. N .D. fr. 1, p. 1229 (Pease); the sentence is thought to come from a passage lost at
3.65.

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bound to be mortal too, 8 and it's no wonder they don't see God when they
can’t even see the man they think they see! This object before their eyes is
not man but man’s container, and a man’s quality and form are not visible in
the shape of the vessel that contains him but in his acts and in the quality of
his behaviour. 9 People who worship images are bodies lacking man
because they have given themselves over to things of the body, and they see
no more intellectually than they do physically, even though it isthe business
of the brain to sort out with greater precision what physical sight cannot
observe.

10 These are the people so fiercely attacked for their dim and abject
attitude in prostrating themselves in unnatural worship of earthly things by
that same philosopher poet who says [Lucr. 6.52-53], 'In terror of the gods
they abase their minds and flatten them to the ground’, though when he said
that he meant somethi ng else: si nee his gods have no care for manki nd, there
was nothing thereto worship at all. 11 Finally, he says elsewhere [5.1198-
1202] that religions and cults of gods are a meaningless activity: 'It is no
piety at all to be seen in public 5 bowing time and again to a stone and visiting
all the altars, falling prostrate to the ground and spreading one’s hands
before the shrines of the gods, nor is it piety to drench altars in animal blood
and tack prayer on to prayer.' If these things are vain, then surely so lofty and
sublime a thing as the mind must not be distracted and forced to the ground?
It should bethinking only of heavenly things.

12 Wise men therefore attacked false religions because they realised
they were false, but that did not bring in true religion because they did not
know what sort of a thing or where it was. 13 Because they could not find the
true religion, they thought of all religions as void, and so fell into a much
greater error than the people who kept up a false one. 14 Those people are
certainly foolish to worship such frail stuff, assuming there is something
heavenly in what is earthly and corruptible; but they have some sense, and
they can be forgiven for graspi ng man's supreme busi ness i n theory if not i n
full fact, given thattheonly, or at I east the most important, distinction between
man and the dumb creation is in religion.

15 But the wiser these people were in recognising the error of false
religion, the stupider they were for not thinking that there was a true
religion. 16 Because it is easier to criticise other people’s ideas than one's
own, they saw the precipice in front of others but failed to see what lay

5 In public: uulgatum; some of L.’s M SS have uelatum, which is Lucretius' text, meaning
veiled.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

125

before their own feet. 17 On either side then, there is great stupidity to be
found and a certain smack of wisdom, so that you can be in doubt which
ones to call the stupider, the ones who adopt a bogus religion or the ones
who adopt none at all.

18 As I said, however, the inexpert and the ones who do not claim to be
clever can be forgiven, but those who claim wisdom and display stupidity
instead cannot. 19 I am not so unfair as to think that they ought to have
guessed how to find the truth on their own, since I acknowledge it can’t be
done, but I do require of them what they could have achieved by just
thinking. 20 If they realised that there was a true religion and attacked the
false ones, declaring openly that people were not observing the true one, that
would have been more sensible of them. Perhaps, however, they were influ¬
enced by the idea that if there were a true religion, it would declare itself and
make its own claim, and not let anything else exist. 21 They simply could not
see by whom or what, or how, a true religion might get suppressed: but that
is a matter of God’s promise and the mystery of heaven; without being
taught it no one can know it at all.

22 The main point is this. The inexpert and the ignorant treat false
religions as true because they do not know the true one and they do not
understand the false ones, whereas better informed people, in their ignor¬
ance of the true religion, either persist in the ones they know to be false so
as to look as if they abide by something, or they worship absolutely
nothing in case they fall into error, even though it is the greatest error of all
to copy the life of the beasts in the form of man. 23 To realise that
something is wrong is a mark of wisdom, but of mere human wisdom; man
cannot go beyond this stage, and so, as I have explained, many philo¬
sophers have excluded religions. To know the truth, on the other hand, is a
mark of divine wisdom; man cannot attain this knowledge without being
taught it by God. 24 in realising what is not the case the philosophers have
thus achieved the height of human wisdom, but they have not been able to
reach the point of saying what is. Cicero’s remark is well known [N ,D. 1.91]:
'If only I could discover the truth as easily as I can expose falsehood.’ 25 Since
that is beyond our power to achieve as humans, we have been granted the
opportunity for it by god: he has given us knowledge of the truth. The four
final books will serve to setthatforth; meantime, let us continue to uncover
falsehood as we began.

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Statues are impotent; and sacrilege is unpunished

4.1What importance can images have then, when it was up to a mere man
whether they turned into something else or didn't get made at all? 6 This is
why Priapus, in Horace, speaks thus [Sat. 1.8.1-4]: 'Once I was a fig-tree
trunk, a useless bit of timber, when the carpenter, uncertain whether to make
a stool ora Priapus, preferred to have the god. So a god am I, the great terror
of thieves and birds.’ 2 Now there's a protector to make a man feel safe! I
mean, are thieves so stupid that they fear Priapus' erection when the very
birds which they suppose are kept off for fear of his scythe or his sex perch
on artificial images, on statuesjust like men, that is, and make their nests and
their messes on them? 3 Satirical poet that he was, Horace mocked the
vanity of mankind, but image-makers think they are engaged on serious
business. 4 The greatest poet of them all, despite his common sense in other
respects, goes soft on this topic, more like an old woman than a poet, 7 when
in his most perfect books he gives the foil owing advice [Verg. G. 4.110-11]:
'Let the protection of Priapus of the Hellespont, who watches against birds
and thieves, keep all safe with his willow scythe.’ 5 People are thus worship¬
ping things mortal or mortally made, things that can be broken, burnt and
destroyed. When shrines collapse from age their statues frequently get
shattered; they can go up in flames and be reduced to ash, and they often fall
prey to thieves, unless their size saves them or some diligent watch keeps
guard. 6 We're scared they may get smashed, or burnt, or ruined: what lunacy
it is to be scared of them themselves! What stupidity to hope for any protec¬
tion from things which cannot protect themselves! What perversity, to run
for safety to things which have no power of restoration when damaged
unless their own worshippers see to it!

7 W here then is the truth? it is where no hurt can be done to worship,
where nothing capable of being hurt is to be seen, where sacrilege cannot
happen. Anything dependent on human hand or eye is because of that f rai Ity
in it utterly remote from immortality in any form.

8 People waste their time when they adorn and deck their gods with
gold, ivory and jewels, as if their gods could get any pleasure from such
things. 9 There is as much use in precious gifts to those who cannot perceive
them as there is in gifts to the dead. People lay dead bodies in the ground,
daubing them with spices and wrapping them in precious garments, with as

6 On the lack of images among Christians see M in. Pel. 10.2, with Clarke (1974), 226, n.
129.

7 An unusually sharp criticism of L.’sfavourite poet.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

127

much reason as they honour their gods, who did not notice when they were
made and do not know of their own worship (they got no sense of it from
their consecration).

10 Persius 8 did not agree with gold vases being brought into temples: he
thought it otiose to have anything in religion that was more a means of
expressing greed than piety. 11 it is better to bring as a gift to the god whom
you mean to worship properly [2.73-74] 'a soul where rights human and
divine combine, a mind all hallowed within, and a heart steeped in old-
fashioned honour.’That is a notably wise perception. 12 But the continuation
is ridiculous [2.69-70]: 'Gold in temples is the same as the dolls which girls
offer up to Venus.' Perhaps he despised them for their tiny size. 13 He failed
to see that the very images and statues of gods all made of gold and ivory by
the hands of Polyclitus, Euphranor and Phidias 9 were no more than big
dolls, dedicated not by girls at play, which can be excused, but by bearded
men. 14 Seneca is right therefore to mock the folly of the old: 'We are not
children twice, as the saying is, but for ever; the difference is that we play
bigger games.' 10 15 So it is that they bring to these great silly decorated dolls
ointments, incense and perfumes, offering fine fat victims to this lot, who
have mouths but lack the service of teeth, and a peplos 11 and precious clothes
to that lot, who have no need of veiling, and gold and silver to another lot,
who are less the owners of the stuff than the givers are.

16 When Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily occupied Greece 12 after his
victory, he was right to despise, despoil and taunt such gods (he did indeed
follow up his acts of sacrilege with words of mockery). 13 17 He took a
golden cloak off Olympian J upiter, and ordered a woollen one to replace it,
saying thata golden cloak was heavy in summer and cold in winter, whereas
a woollen one suited either season. 18 He also tore a golden beard off

8 Cf. 6.2.11-12 below. Augustine, civ. 2.6-7, also used Persius to attack paganism.

9 Three famous Greek sculptors: Polyclitus (of Argos, active c. 460-400 BC) was best
known for his Doryphorus (Spearbearer) in bronze, Euphranor (active c. 370-330 BC) for his
colossal marble Apollo Patrous, and Phidias (active c. 465-425 BC), friend of Pericles, for
directing the Parthenon's exterior sculpture and for sculpting the Zeus at Olympia.

10 Sen. F95, 208 (Vottero).

11 Peplos: Greek for robe or dress. The most famous was the one woven new and presented
to Athena every fourth year at the Great Panathenaea for the statue of her which was eventually
kept in the Erechtheum on the A cropolis.

12 L. probably means Magna Graecia, the parts of Sicily and south Italy of heavy Greek
population. During the time of his power (405-367 BC), Dionysius I of Syracuse extended his
area of control across the straits of M essina.

13 SeeCic. N.D. 3.83.

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Aesculapius, saying it was incongruous and unfair that his father Apollo
should still be beardless and smooth-skinned and that son should be seen
with a beard before his father. 19 He would pull away plates and proces¬
sional goods too, and certain small figurines held in the outstretched hands
of statues, saying he was accepting them, not removing them: it was
particularly silly and ungrateful to refuse gifts so freely offered by those to
whom peoplewerealready praying forgood. 20 Because he wasa victorious
king, he got away with it, and his usual success stayed with him too; he lived
on into old age and passed his kingship on to his son in person. In his case,
since people could not avenge his acts of sacrilege, the gods themselves
should have been their own avengers.

21 If a poor man does things like that, he gets the whips and flames, the
rack, crucifixion, anything that men maddened to anger can think of, 22 but
in punishing people caught in sacrilege they mistrust the power of theirown
gods: if they think their gods do have power, why not leave the space for
revenge to them? 23They assume of course that thievesof sacred objects get
caught and held by divine will, and theirown cruelty has less to do with their
anger than thei r fear that if they fai I to avenge the assault upon the gods, then
punishment will seek them out. What an incredible fantasy! They think the
gods will get at them for the crimes of other people, when those very gods
themselves have been quite unableto get at their own attackers and despoilers!
24 Oh, but the gods have often taken revenge upon the sacrilegious, they say.
That could be mere accident, in that it is occasional and not consistent; but I
will show how it happens a little later on.

25 For the moment I am asking why they did not take revenge on
Dionysius for all his acts of great sacrilege, when he treated the gods as a
joke not privately, but quite openly. Why did they not keep this vigorous
sinner away from their temples, rites and statues? Why did he put to sea
without disaster after he had stolen sacred objects (something he acknow¬
ledged himself with a joke, in his usual way)? 26 'Do you see,' he said to his
companions, scared as they were of a shipwreck, 'how fair a voyage we
sacrilegious folk are being granted by the immortal gods themselves?'
Perhaps he had learntfrom Plato that the immortal gods are nothing. 14 27 What
about C.Verres? Cicero, his prosecutor, compared him not only to Dionysius

14 Plato probably visited Sicily first in 388/7; he may have been invited to Syracuse by its
ruler; the visit was ended, according to the story, by Dionysius having him sold into slavery (see
3.25.16 below). After Dionysius' death Plato visited again, probably in 367 and in 361, to
educate the new ruler, Dionysius' son. L. may be confusing the two; the son was also called
Dionysius.

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129

but also to Phalaris, 15 and to every other tyrant. Verres stripped the whole of
Sicily of its gods’ statues and their shri ne furniture. 28 It would be tedious to
work through all the cases: one will do, where the prosecutor used all his
powers of eloquence and every vocal and physical effort to weep for Ceres,
whether of Catina or of Henna. 16 Traditional scruples were so strong at
Catina that it was forbidden for men to approach her temple’s secret
sanctuary; at Henna the cult of Ceres was so ancient that all the histories say
she was the goddess who first found grain in the soil there and it was her
daughter who was abducted from there as a girl. 29 In the time of the
Gracchi, when Rome was racked with plots and portents, and it had been
discovered in the Si by 11 i ne books that C eres' most ancient’ should be placated,
it was to Henna that the delegation was sent. 17 30 This is the Ceres, either
holiest Ceres not to be seen by men even for the sake of prayer, or the most
ancient one, placated by the senate and people of Rome with sacrifices and
offerings, who was stolen from her secret and ancient sanctuary by a posse
of thieving slaves at the instigation of C. Verres, and he got away with it.
31 When Cicero declared that the Sicilians had begged him to take up their
cause, he used these words [Div. Caec. 3]: 'The peoplenow had no godsin
their cities to turn to because C. Verres had stolen their holiest statues out of
their most sacred shrines’, as if by stealing them from their towns and
temples Verres had also stolen them from heaven. 32 Thus it becomes plain
that those gods had no more in them than the stuff they were made of.

33 The Sicilians were not wrong to turn to you, Cicero, to a man, that is,
after three years' experience of the impotence of their gods. They would be
stupid indeed to have turned to them to ward off human wickedness when
the gods could vent no wrath on Verres even on their own behalf. 34 Oh, but
Verres was found guilty of those deeds, they say. But it wasn't the gods who
restored justice: it was the hard work of Cicero, whether in beating down
Verres' protectors or in fighting against their influence. 35 After all, in
Verres' case there was no guilty verdict: he got away. 18 The immortal gods
apparently gave him peace and quiet in which to enjoy the fruits of his

15 SeeCic. Ver. 5.145. Phalaris was tyrant of Agrigentum (7-6 cent. BC); Pindar mentions
him (Pyth. 1.95). For comparison with the Roman governor of Sicily C. Verres, prosecuted by
Cicero in 70 BC, see Off. 2.26 and 3.29-32.

16 The cult statues of Ceres were allegedly stolen by order of Verres: Cic. Ver. 4.99-102,
106-12.

17 See Cic. Ver. 4.108.

18 Anticipating a verdict against him, Verres withdrew to M arseilies to escape any penalty
of the court. He lived there in voluntary exile for over 25 years.

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sacrilege in tranquillity just as they gave Dionysius a fair wind for his cargo
of divine plunder. 36 Later, when civil war was raging, Verres was far away
from all peril and fear, protected by his defeat: he merely heard of other
people's hard times and wretched deaths. When all the rest stood tall he
seemed the only failure, but when all the rest were failing, he alone stayed on
his feet; only when the profits of his sacrilege were gone and he was sated
with lifeand weary with agedid triumviral proscription carry him off, just as
it also did Cicero, avenger of the gods' slighted majesty. 37 Even then Verres
had the luck, in hearing how miserably his prosecutor had died before his
own death occurred. No doubt the gods took care that one so good at
sacrilege and plunder of theircults should notdietill he had somesolacefor
their vengeance.

E rrors of the Stoics

5.1 11 is far better then to set aside things incapable of meaningful response
and to direct one’s gaze where the seat and habitation of the true god is, who
has poised the earth with a sure steadiness, who has picked out the heaven
with flashing stars, who has lit up the sun, that unique and brightest light of
humanity, to prove his own unique greatness, and has poured the waters
round the lands and taught the rivers to flow with unceasing stream: he'bade
the fields stretch out, the valleys sink, the woods be clothed with leaf, the
stony mountains rise' [Ovid, M et. 1.43-44], 2 And not a bit of it was the
work of J upiter, born seventeen hundred years ago: it was all done by 'that
great craftsman, the starter of a better world’ [Ovid, M et. 1.79] whose name
is God, whose own beginning is not to be sought because it cannot be
understood. 3 It is enough for a full and perfect wisdom in man if he under¬
stand that God exists, and the full power of that understanding is this, that he
look up and do honour to him who is both father of the human race and
creator of all wonders.

4 Hence some people of dull and blunted perception adore as if they were
gods elements that are mere creations and lack all capacity to feel. 5 These
people marvelled at the works of god, the sky, that is, with its different stars,
the earth with its fields and hills, the seas with their rivers, lakes and springs,
until their wonder bewildered them; they forgot the creator himself whom
they could not see, and began to venerate and worship his works, and never
could understand how much greater and more marvellous is he who created
them from nothing. 6 Though they see these things obeying God’s laws and
serving the needs of man as such things ever must, they still think of them as

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gods, which is ingratitude towards God’s goodness: they have put the works
of God in front of God, their most indulgent father. 19

7 It is not surprising, however, that rude and ignorant people go wrong
when even philosophers of the Stoic school are of the same opinion,
thinking that every moving thing in the sky is to be counted among the gods.
In Cicero the Stoic L uci I i us speaks as follows [N.D. 2.54]: 8 'This regularity
among the stars then, this extraordinary punctuality throughout all eternity
of theirtiming intheirvery different courses, issomething I cannot imagine
occurring without a mind, a purpose, a plan. Since we see it in the stars, we
cannot fail to count them too among the number of the gods.' 9 A little earlier
he also says [N ,D. 2.44]: 'The movements of the stars must be voluntary.
Once see that, and it would not only be stupid but also wicked to deny their
divinity.’

10 We, however, do deny it consistently, and we can also show that you
philosophers are not just stupid and wicked, but also blind, inept and mad:
you have outdone the ignorance of the ignorant with nonsense. 20 They think
the sun and moon are gods, while you think the stars are too. 11 Teach us the
mysteries of the stars, so that we can raise altars and temples to each of them,
and know the rites and the day for the worship of each, and the titles and
prayers with which to address them - unless perhaps we should be worship¬
ping such numerous and diminutive gods collectively, with no distinctions
between them!

12 W hat about the fact that the proof by which they conclude all things
in the sky are gods works to the opposite effect? If they think that the
heavenly bodies are gods because they have fixed and analysable courses,
they are wrong. This is the proof that they are not gods, because they cannot
diverge from their ordered orbits. 13 If they were gods, they could move this
way and that all over the place without any need to do so, like animals on
earth, whose wills are free, and so they roam hither and thither as they
pi ease, each one goi ng w here its i ncl i nation takes i 1.14 T he movement of the
stars is therefore not 'voluntary' but inevitable: they simply obey the rules
and duties assigned to them. 15 When L uci I i us was detailing the orbits of the
stars, however, and he realised they could not be fortuitous because of the
way that times and events fitted together, he concluded that they were
voluntary presumably because they could not move in such regular order
uni ess they had some intelligent awareness of their proper business. 16 Truth

19 For Stoic pantheism seee.g. Cic. N.D. 1.39; 2.37-39.

20 See Cic. N.D. 3.39-40.

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is so very difficult for the ignorant, and so easy for those who know! 'If,' he
says, 'the movements of the stars are not fortuitous, then they can only be
voluntary.' No no! It is as plain that they are not voluntary as it is that they are
not haphazard. 17 'How can they stay constant in completing their courses
then?' God the creator of the universe so arranged it, of course; he contrived
forthem to hurtle through the spaces of heaven by hisdivineand marvellous
plan so that they should accomplish the alternations of the seasons in their
succession. 18 Could Archimedes in Sicily make a model of the world from
a bronze sphere, and fix the sun and moon in it so that they could carry out
their different movements on the pattern of their celestial rotations virtually
day by day, and the sphere in its rotation show not only the rising and setting
of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon but also the separate
courses of the fixed and the wandering stars, and yet God could not construct
the original, and bring about what human skill can only copy? 19 If a Stoic
had seen the representations of the stars marked in paint on that piece of
bronze, would he say that they moved of their own will and not by contri¬
vance of their maker? The stars do have a plan for the performance of their
movements, but the plan belongs to God who made and governs all things,
and not to the stars that move by it.

20 Had he wanted the sun to stay still, there would be day for ever and
ever. So too, if the stars made no movements, who doubts there would be
night eternal? 21 He willed them to move in order to have alternation of day
and night and he willed their variety of movement so that there should be
mutual exchange not only of day and night, setting up different times for
work and rest, but also of cold and heat so that the power of the different
seasons could serve for the sowing and ripening of crops. 22 Because the
philosophers failed to see this clever application of God’s power in arrang¬
ing the courses of the stars, so they thought that the stars were living things,
as if they marched of their own accord and not to God’s plan. 23 As for why
God planned it so, anyone can tell that, it was to prevent too black a night
with its grim and shuddering darkness lying heavy on living things and
harming them if the light of the sun withdrew. So too he marked the sky with
marvellous variation and tempered the darkness with many tiny lights.

24 Ovid saw it so much more shrewdly than those who think they study
wisdom: he knew those lights were put there by God to dispel the horror of
darkness. He closed his abridgement of Phaenomena with these three verses:
'Such in form, and so many, were the signs god set upon heaven, and he bade
them spread through thegloomy darkness and givea clear light to the frosty
night.’

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133

25 If it is impossible for stars to be gods, then sun and moon cannot be
gods either, sincetheir light differs from starlight not in kind butin intensity.
But if these are not gods, then neither is the sky in which they all have their
being. 26 Similarly, if the earth which we tread and which we work and till
for food is not a god, neither will the lowlands and the highlands be gods,
and if they are not gods, then neither can the whole earth be seen as a god. 27
So too, if water which serves living things for drinking and washing is not a
god, then neither are its sources the springs; and if springs are not gods,
neither are the rivers that accumulate from them; if rivers too are not gods,
then even the sea, the product of the rivers, cannot be counted a god. 28 B ut
if neither sky nor earth nor sea, which are parts of the world, can be gods,
then neither is the whole world a god, as those Stoics say, arguing that it has
both life and wisdom and so is a god. They have been so inconsistent in all
this that there is nothing they havesaid that they have not also unsaid. 29They
argue as follows: it is impossible for senses to be missing in anything which
generates things with senses. The world generates man, who is endowed with
senses; therefore, they say, the world itself must have senses. 30 Likewise,
senses cannot be missing in something of which a part has senses; since
therefore man has senses, there must be sense also in the world of which
man is part. 31 The two basic propositions are sound enough, that anything
generating something endowed with senses also has senses and that senses
exist in anything of which a part has senses, but the minor premises which
round off the process of argument are wrong, because the world does not
generate man and man is not part of the world. The same God made man in
the beginning as made the world, and man is not a part of the world as a limb
is of a body: 32 the world can exist without man as a town can, ora house. In
fact, however, justasa houseisthehabitation of onehuman and atown isthe
habitation of one people, so the world is the domicile of the whole human
race; the habitation is one thing, the inhabitant another.

33 But while they strove to validate the theory they had mistakenly
adopted, that the world has senses and is god, they failed to see the
consequences of their arguments. 34 For if man is part of the world and the
world has senses because man has, then because man is mortal the earth is
bound to be mortal too, and not just mortal but subject to every disease and
emotion. 35 Contrarily, if the world is a god and its parts are immortal, then
man is a god too, because he is (I quote) a part of the world. And if man, then
the beasts of burden and the farm animals and all the other varieties of beast
and bird and fish, si nee they too have senses in the same way and are parts of
the world. 36 Oh, but that’s all right, they say: the Egyptians worship them

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

too. But we get to a point where frogs and fleas and ants are apparently gods,
because they too have senses and are a part of the world. A rguments based i n
error always have inept and absurd conclusions. 37 W hat about these same
people saying that the world was constructed for the sake of gods and men,
to be their common home? If the world was constructed, then it is neither a
god nor alive; living things get born, not constructed, and if it was built, then
it is just like a house or a ship. There is then a maker of the world, God; on
one side will be the world that was made and on the other he who made it.

38 Now there is the absurd contradiction of asserting the divinity of the
fires in the sky and of all the other elements in the world while also saying
that the world itself isa god. How can one god be constructed out of a pileof
many gods? 39 If the stars are gods, then the world is not a god but the home
of gods. If on the other hand the world isa god, then all the things in it are not
gods but limbs of the god; they simply cannot take the name god on their
own. 40 No one can sensibly say that the limbs of one man are many men.
Anyway, there is no precise comparison between a living thing and the
world. Because a living being is endowed with senses, so are its limbs; they
don't lose that unless sundered from the body. 41 What then does the world
bear comparison with? They tell us themselves when they agree that it was
made to be a sort of joint home for gods and men. If it was constructed as a
home, then it is not a god and neither are the elements that are its parts,
because a house cannot exercise mastery over itself, nor can the things the
house is built of. 42 Thus they are defeated not only by the truth but also by
their own words. J ust as a house built to be lived in has no sentience of its
own and is subject to the master who made it or inhabits it, so the world has
no sentience of itself and is subject to God its maker, who made it for his
own use.

God's creations are worshipped rather than God

ftlThey are wrong, then, these fools, and doubly wrong: first, they put the
elements, thatis, the creations of God, beforeGod, and second, they worship
representations of those very elements, giving them human form. 2 They
make i mages of the sun and moon i n human shape, and of fi re, earth and sea
too, which they call Vulcan, Vesta and Neptune, instead of sacrificing in the
open to the actual elements. People are so gripped with a desire for
likenesses that the real thing isnow thoughtless valuable; what really makes
them happy is gold, jewels and ivory. 3 Their beauty and brightness catch the
eye, and where they don’tgleam peoplethink no religion exists. Thus greed

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

135

and lust get exercised under cover of gods. They think the gods love what
they themselves desire, anything that makes theft, murder and robbery the
daily madness, anything that uproots people and towns in wars throughout
the world. 4 They dedicate their loot and plunder to the gods, who must be
feeble things, bereft of any virtue, if they submit to such acts of greed. 5 Why
should we think of them as heavenly beings if they want something from
earth, or as blessed if they have needs, or as pure if they take pleasure in
things that the covetousness of men is rightly condemned for seeking?

6 So people come to the gods not for worship’s sake, which cannot exist
in a context of ill-gotten gains and dishonesty, but to glut their eyes with
gold, to gaze at the sheen of polished marble and ivory, to handle clothes rich
in jewels and colours or drinking cups picked out with gleaming gems,
gazing on them insatiably. The more elaborate their temples and the prettier
their statues, the more effective the gods are thought to be; their worship is
no more than the admiration of greedy humans.

7 This is the religion handed down to them by their ancestors which they
strive so fiercely to protect and sustain. They don't stop to think what sort of
religion it is; they trust it is sound and true from the fact that old men passed
iton, and such is the authority of age that they think ita crime to question it.
Hence the belief in it everywhere as if it were the certain truth. 8 In Cicero
for instance [N.D. 3.6], Cotta says to Lucilius: 'There, Balbus, you've got
Cotta's views, a priest's views. Now let me know what your views are;
you’re a philosopher, and I ought to get a reason for religion from you, though
I must accept our ancestors’ views without one.’ 9 If you believe, why do you
want reason, which can cause unbelief? But if you think you ought to look
for a reason, then you don’t believe; you're asking for one so as to follow it
when you find it. 10 Suppose reason instructs you that no true religions of
gods exist: what will you do? Will you follow your ancestors or reason, a
reason not fed into you by someone else but found and raised on high by you
yourself when you plucked up all religion by the roots? 11 If you prefer
reason, you have to withdraw from the institutions and authority of your
ancestors because the only right thing is what reason prescribes; if piety
persuades you to follow your ancestors, then you admit two things: they
were stupid for accepting irrational religions, and you are a fool for
observing what you are sure is false. 12 Since, however, the word ancestor is
coming up so much, it is high time to look at who these people were whose
authority it is thought so wicked to reject.

13 W hen Romulus was about to found his city, he called together the
shepherds among whom he had grown up, and since their number seemed

136

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

inadequate for the foundation, he declared asylum. All the worst types
sought refuge with him from the neighbouring areas without any distinction
of status. 14 Out of the sum of them he welded together a people, choosing
for the senate those that were the oldest and calling them fathers: he would
go on their advice in everything. Propertius the elegist speaks of that senate
asfollows [4.1.13-14,11-12]: 'A cow horn called the firstQui rites to debate;
often the senate was a hundred men in a field. Nowadays the senate house
gleams on high with its senators in robes; in the old days the fathers wore
skins: what rustic wits they were!' 15 Those are the fathers whose decisions
are to be observed so devotedly by wise and learned men, and all posterity
must judge that what a hundred skin-girt elders decided to enact is true and
immutable; and yet, as was said in Book 1 [22.1-8], Numa got them to
accept as true rituals which he himself installed. 16 Are later generations
really to think so highly of the authority of people whom no one in their own
day, highest or lowest, thought fit to have as in-laws?

Reason to be used, not tradition, in assessing the power of gods

7.11 n the context of living life intelligently it is every man’s especial duty to
have confidence in himself and to rely on his own judgment and perceptions
in order to search out and weigh up the truth, rather than be credulous and
get deceived by other people's mistakes as if bereft of wits oneself. 2 God
gave all men wisdom to the extent that was proper to each so that they could
search out things not heard of and weigh up the things they did hear. They
may have preceded us in time, but they have not therefore preceded us in
wisdom, and if wisdom is granted equally to all, our predecessors cannot
have taken it all. 3 Like the light and brightness of the sun, it is undiminish-
able, because wisdom is the light of the human heart as the sun is the
illumination of our eyes. 4 Since everybody has the innate capacity to be
wise - to seek the truth, that is - people who exercise no judgment in
accepting the ideas of their ancestors are reducing their own intelligence;
they are being led by others like sheep. 5 The mistake is this: they think that
if the word 'greater' is there, then they themselves cannot be more intelligent
because the word for them is 'lesser', nor can the others be stupid si nee they
are the 'greater' ones. 21 6 So what prevents us using their example? They

21 L. is playing on the use of maior, greater and minor, lesser, which also mean (usually
with natu, by birth) older and younger. M aiores was in common use to mean ancestors, as in
6.7-12 above.

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137

passed on to their successors the falsehoods they found; let us pass on to our
successors something better, the truth that we have found.

7 That leaves a massive problem, and discussion of it depends not on
common sense but on knowledge. It will take sometime to set it out so that
nothing is left at all doubtful. People may perhaps have recourse to the very
considerable and unambiguous tradition which says that those who, according
to our analysis, are not gods have nevertheless made frequent demonstrati on
of their power by way of prodigies, dreams, auguries and oracles. 8 A long
list could certainly be made 22 of things which deserve our wonder, most
notably the advice of the chief augur A ttus Navi us to Tarquinius Priscus, to
start on nothing new without first taking an augury; the king, mocking
people’s faith in the art, told him to consult the birds and then tell him
whether it was possible for him to do what he had in mind, and when Navi us
said it was, 'Then take this whetstone,’ he said, 'and slice it in two with a
razor.’Without a pause the augur took the stone and split it. 9 Second comes
the appearance of Castor and Pollux by the water of J uturna in the Latin war,
washing the sweat off their horses when thei r tempie attached to the fountai n
had opened of its own accord. 23 10 it is said that they also revealed
themselves in the M acedonian war, sitting on white horses, to P. Vatienuson
his way to Rome by night; they declared that king Perseus had been con¬
quered and made prisoner that very day. A few days later despatches from
Paul us confi rmed the truth of it. 24 11T here is al so the mi racl e of the statue of
Fortuna M uliebris, which issaid to havespoken, and more than once; so too
the statue of J uno M oneta: when Veii was captured, 25 one of the soldiers
detailed to move the statue to Rome asked in jest, for fun, whether she
wanted to come to Rome, and she said yes. 12 Another example of a miracle
is Claudia. When the I dean M other had been brought to Rome in accordance
with the Sibyl line books, 26 and the ship conveying her got stuck on a shoal in
theTiber and no force could shift it, they say that Claudia, who had always

22 See M in. Fel. 7 for a shorter list. L. appears to have used Valerius M aximus (1.1.8). The
tale of A ttus N avius is told in Livy 1.36.3-4.

23 Cic. N.D. 2.6; V. Max. 1.8.1; D.H. 6.13.

24 The reference is to the Third M acedonian War of 171-168 BC. The Roman army was led
by L. Aemilius Paulius (L.'s M SS show one T only; see 16.17 below for an earlier member of
the same family).

25 Traditionally dated to 396 BC. For the anecdote, see Livy 5.22. For the ceremony of
euocatio to which allusion is made, seeM acrobius, Sat. 3.9.7-8: the tutelary god of the doomed
city passes over to the Romans at their invitation.

26 For the arrival of M agna M ater (= Cybele), see Livy 29.10.4-11.8; 14.5; M in. Fel. 7.3;
with Beard, North and Price (1998), voi. 1, 96-99; vol. 2, 44-47.

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been considered immodestfor overmuch attention to her person, begged the
goddess on bended knee to follow her girdle if she believed in her modesty,
and a single woman shifted a ship which all the young men of Rome could
not. 13 Equally remarkable is the story of Aesculapius: he was summoned
from Epidaurus to Rome when a plague was raging, and freed the city from
prolonged pestilence. 27

14A list can also be made of those whose prompt punishment for sacri¬
lege makes people think the gods avenged the wrong done them. 28 15 A ppi us
Claudius the censor transferred the ritual of Hercules to the care of public
slaves and lost his sight; the Potitius family, which surrendered the cult, was
wiped out within the space of one year. 16 So too the censor Fulvius
removed some marble tiles from the temple of Juno L acini a to roof the
temple of Fortuna Equestris which he had built at Rome: he lost his wits, he
lost his two sons fighting in Illyrium, and died of an extremity of grief.
17 M ark Antony’s prefect Turul I i us cut down a grove of Aesculapius on Cos
to build a fleet: he was later killed by soldiers of Caesar on the spot. 18 The
example of Pyrrhus can be added to these: he stole money from the treasury
of Proserpina at Locri, and suffered shipwreck; after the smash, which
occurred close by the goddess’ temple, nothing was found intact except the
money. 19 Ceres of M iletus also earned herself much veneration: the town
had been captured by Alexander; his soldiers broke in to plunder her shrine,
and suddenly a flash of light left every man blind.

20 Even dreams are found which seem to reveal the power of the gods.
J upiter is said to have appeared in the peace of the night to a plebeian named
Tiberius A tinius, 29 bidding him tell the consuls and senate that at the most
recent games in the Circus the dance-leader had offended him: a certain
AutroniusM aximushad flogged a slave, and had brought him to punishment
in mid circus under the fork; the games should therefore be started again.
21W hen Atiniusfailed to give the message, the same day he lost his son and
was himself taken by a serious illness; when he had the same vision again,
asking him whether he had paid penalty enough for his neglect of instructions,
he had himself carried to the consuls on a litter, and upon declaring
everything in the senate received his physical strength back and went home
on his own two feet. 22 Of no less remark is the dream which is said to have
saved Augustus. When in the civil war with Brutus he fell gravely ill and

27 See Livy 10.47.6-7 (293 BC), with Beard, North and Price (1998), vol. 1, 69; vol. 2, 43.

28 For a different list of casualties, see M in. Fel. 7.4.

29 See Livy 2.36 (who calls him T. Latinius); M acr. Sat. 1.11 (Annius).

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139

decided to miss the battle, his doctor Artorius was visited by a likeness of
Minerva recommending that because of his infirmity Augustus should not
stay in camp. He was therefore taken to the fight on a litter, and the same day
his camp was captured by B rutus.

23 M any similar examples can be presented besides, but I fear that if I
dwell too long upon the presentation of the other side, either I may seem to
have forgotten my purpose, or else I may incur a charge of prolixity.

God created the world - and the potential for evil

&11 will therefore set out the reason for all these incidents so that their
difficulties and obscurities can be more readily understood, and I will
expose all those tricks of bogus divinity which seduce people too far from
the path of truth. 2 I will cast back a long way, however, so that any who
come to read this with no experience or knowledge of the truth may be
informed and understand what is the'head and cause of these evils', 30 and in
that light may see their own errors and those of the whole human race.

3 Si nee God was very alert in his preparations and very skilful in execu¬
tion, before he began this task of the world he created good and evil. What
thatisl will explain moreclearly, in case anyone thinks I am talking the way
poets usually talk, who embrace the abstract in images that are virtually
visible. Since nothing existed at the time apart from himself, because the
source of full and perfect good was in himself, as it always is, in order that
good should spring from him like a stream and flow forth on and on, he
produced a spirit like himself, which was to be endowed with all the virtues
of God his father. How he did it when there was only himself I will try to
explain in my fourth book. 4 Then by means of the one he made first he
made another, liable to corruption. In this one the divine inheritance was not
to abide. This spirit was poisoned by its own envy; it changed from good to
evil, and of its own choice, a free choice granted it by God, it claimed for
itself a contradictory name. 31 5 The source of all evil can consequently be
seen as jealousy. The spirit was jealous of the one that came before it, which
consistently earned the favour and affection of God its father. I will be brief
about that spirit here, because its virtue, name and purpose are to be set out
elsewhere; I will deal with the other more extensively, so that the pattern of
God’s purpose may be known: good cannot be understood without evil, nor

30 Verg. A. 11.361.

31 Lucifer: bringer of light.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

can evil without good, and wisdom istheknowledgeof good and evil. 6 This
evil spirit, which made itself evil instead of good, the Greeks therefore call
the slanderer; 232 we call it the prosecutor, because it brings before God the
prosecution of crimes which it inspires itself.

6a 33 Why God wanted it to be like that I will now explain, as far as my
modest perception can manage. 6b When God was about to make this
world, which was to be composed of diverse and discordant elements, he
established and created in advance of that diversity, in advance of every¬
thing indeed, two sources for these elements which were to oppose and
quarrel with each other; these are the two spirits right and wrong, the one
serving as God's right hand, as it were, and the other as his left, so that they
should have control of the contrarieties out of whose combination and
blending the world and everything in it would be composed. 6c A nd when
he was about to make man, whose rule for living was to be virtue through
which he would achieve immortality, he made good and evil so that there
could be virtue; if virtue were not beset with evils, it will either lose its
potency or else not exist at all. 6d It is the sharpness of need which makes
wealth look good, it is the gloom of darkness which commends the grace of
light, and the pleasures of health and strength are learnt from sickness and
pain. J ust so, good cannot exist without evil in this life, and though each is
opposed to the other, yet they so stick together that if you remove one, you
remove both. 6eGood cannot be grasped and understood without the effort
to escape from evil, and evil cannot be watched and overcome without the
help of good duly grasped and understood. Evil therefore had to be created,
so that there could be good. 6f Because it was not right for evil to proceed
from God - God will not act against himself - he set up this inventor of
evils, and when he created him, he gave him the talent and wit to think up
evil things, so that he should be the home of depravity of will and of perfect
wickedness. God wanted him to bethesourceof all that was theoppositeof
his own virtues, and he wanted competition with him over whether he
himself could cause more good than the other could cause evil. 6g But then
again, since there can be no successsful fight against God supreme, he
passed control of his own good to his champion, who we said above was
good and perfect. So he set up a pair to fight, and equipped them, but the
one of them he loved like a good son and the other he disowned as a bad son.
Later he created many more agents to carry out his tasks, whom the Greeks

32 The Greek word, which L. quotes (hence the G), isdiabolos: whence 'devil'.

33 Sections 6a to 6i Brandt regarded as interpolated; hence the numbering. Seepp. 27-28n.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

141

call angels and.. 34 6h Though corruptible, they were not corrupted straight¬
away, from the moment of their creation; they opted out of the strength of
their heavenly being perversely and deliberately after the world had been
made and organised, as I will explain shortly, but in the beginning they were
all equal, and existed with God on equal terms, and were therefore all
angels, but led by the two above. 6i 35 When God had put one of these two in
charge of good and the other in charge of evil, then he started on the fabric
of the world, with all those he had created serving him in specific offices as
arranged. 7 When he had thus begun the making of the world, he put his
eldest and most important son in charge of the whole work, using him as his
adviser and craftsman in thinking things out and in arranging and comple¬
ting them, since he was perfect in foresight, planning and power. I will be
brief on the topic here, since his virtue, name and purpose are to be set out
elsewhere.

8 No one need ask after the materials from which God created those
great and wonderful works. He made them all from nothing. The poets are
not to be heeded either: they say that in the beginning there was chaos, a
confusion of bits and pieces, and God sorted the whole heap out later, picking
bits out of the pile of confusion one by one and allotting each its place, and
so he fitted out the world at the same time as he made it. 9 Replying to them
is easy: they do not understand the power of God; they think he can make
nothing unless material is lying there ready.

Even the philosophers have made that mistake. 10 Cicero, discussing the
nature of the gods, says: 'First then, it is not demonstrable that the stuff of
things, from which everything has arisen, was brought into being by divine
providence; it is more likely that it has, and always has had, its own power
and nature. 11 A craftsman about to build something does not create the
material himself but uses what is ready there; likewise a modeller in wax; so
for your divine providence material ought to have been at hand, available for
use and not for him still to make. But if the basic material is not made by
god, then neither are earth, air, fire and water made by god.' 36

12 What a lot of errors in those ten lines! First is the fact that Cicero, who
was always a supporter of providence in virtually all his other debates and
works, deploying the most penetrating of arguments against those who
denied the existence of providence, now becomes a sort of traitor or turncoat

34 The M SS do not yield translatable text at this point.

35 This section, 6i, is to some extent a doublet of the next one, 7.

36 Cic. N .D. fr. 2, p. 1229 (Pease).

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trying to abolish providence himself. 13 If you wanted to argue against him,
there is no need to rack your brains: read him some of his own writings;
Cicero can't be refuted by anyone more forcefully than by Cicero.

14 The freedom of truly free people to say and think what they like is
something we can acknowledge in the tradition of the Academics, but we
must still ponder what they do think. 'It is not demonstrable,' he says, 'that
the stuff of thi ngs was made by god.’ 15 W hat is your proof of that? You have
offered no reason why it can't be shown. 16 M y view is quite the opposite,
that it very much can be shown, and I do notthink ita rash view of mine that
God, reduced by you to the feeble level of man when you grant him only
craftsmanship, has something extra in him. 17 In what way will God's power
differ from man’s power if God needs others’ aid as much as man does? And
he does need it if he can achieve nothing unless someone else supplies him
material. If that is the case, then his virtue is simply flawed, and the supplier
of the material will have to be judged the stronger. 18 What will the name be
for addressing the one who outdoes God in power (on the assumption that it
is greater to make your own material than apply someone else's)? 19 If it is
impossible for anything to be more powerful than God, who is by necessity
a being of perfect virtue, power and reason, then he is as much the maker of
the basic material as he is the maker of things composed of it. For without
god’s creative will nothing can exist, nor should it.

20 'It is demonstrable, however, that the stuff of things has, and always
has had, its own power and nature.'What power could it have with no one to
give it the power, and what nature if no one created it? If it had power, it got
it from someone. Who could that be except God? If it had a nature (and the
word nature comes simply from the word for being born), then it was born.
But who could bethecauseof its birth exceptGod? 21 If nature, which you
people say is the source of everything, has no power of planning, it can
achieve nothing. If it is capable of generation and creation, it has a power of
planning and therefore must be God, 22 and there is no other name to
employ for that power in which there exists both the providence for thinking
things out and the skill and capacity to create. 23 Seneca put it better.
Sharpest of all theStoics, 37 he saw that nature was simply god. 'Shall wenot
therefore praise god,' he said, 'whose virtue is natural? No one taught him
his virtue. Yes, wewill praise him. Natural asitisto him, he gave himself the
virtue, for god is nature himself.’ 24 Every time you attribute the beginning
of things to nature and deny it to God, then 'You're stuck in the same old

37 Cf. 1.5.26 above. The citation is from Sen. F84,198 (Vottero).

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mud, Geta: you’ll only get out by borrowing.’ 38 First you say it isn't his
creation and then you admit it is, by changing the name you give him.

25 A really inept comparison follows. 'A craftsman,' he says, 'about to
build something does not create the material himself but uses what is ready
there; likewise a modeller in wax; so for your divine providence material
ought to have been at hand, available for use and not for him still to make.’
26 Ought is the wrong word! God will be a creature of inferior competence
if he works from stuff available; that is man's competence. A carpenter with¬
out timber will make nothing, because he cannot make the timber itself,
and incompetence is the mark of human feebleness. 27 God makes his own
material because he can: that competence is the mark of God; if he can't
he's not God. 28 Man makes from what is there because thanks to his
mortality he is weak and thanks to his weakness he is of limited and modest
capacity; God makes from what is not there because thanks to his eternity
he is strong and thanks to his strength he has power immeasurable, power
which lacks end and limit as does the creator’s life. 29 No wonder then that
God, when about to make the world, first prepared the material with which
to make it and prepared it from what was not there. It is wrong for God to
be borrowing from some other source, since he himself is the source and
place of everything. 30 If anything at all precedes him, if there is anything
at all created but not by him, at once he will forfeit the name and power of
God.

Oh, but, they may say, the creation of matter is not like God’s creation
of this world out of matter. 31 in that case two things eternal are being set
up diametrically opposed to each other, which cannot occur without discord
and destruction; things whose power and aim are opposed are bound to be
on a collision course. They cannot thus both be eternal if they come to
collision, because one is bound to win. 32 The nature of anything eternal is
bound to be simple, so that everything comes from it like waters from a
spring. Either God is made from matter or matter from God, and it is easy to
see which proposition is true, 33 for as between God and matter one has
sense and the other does not. The capacity to create can only exist in
something which has sense, wits, thought and motion. 34 Nothing can start,
continue or end existence unless before its existence there was a plan both
for its making and for its continuance after making. 35 Finally, making is
the act of someone who has the will to make and the hands to effect his will.
Anything without sense is doomed to inertia and torpidity for ever; nothing

38 Ter. Ph. 780. Geta is a common slave name.

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can originate where there is no deliberate motion. 36 If all living things
have reason built into them, then no living thing can originate from some¬
thing without reason in it, and there can be no alternative source for
something which is not in the place where it was sought. 37 There should be
no problem, however, in some living things apparently originating in the
earth. They are not born of the actual earth but of the spirit of God, without
which nothing is born. 38 Thus matter is not the source of God because it is
impossible for something with sense to come from something without, nor
something wise from something brute, nor something that cannot suffer
from something that can, nor the bodiless from thecorporeal: rather, God is
the source of matter.

39 Anything of solid and palpable body is liable to external forces;
anything exposed to a force is liable to collapse; anything liable to collapse
will die; anything that dies must have been born; anything born had its
source of birth, a source that is some sentient, thinking creator, expert in
creati on. T hat is surely G od. 40 And si nee God is endowed with sense, reason,
foresight, power and virtue, he can invent and create things both animate and
inanimate because he grasps how each thing should be made. 41 M atter on
the other hand cannot have existed for ever: if it had, it would not undergo
change. Anything that has existed for ever continues to exist for ever, and
anything lacking a start must lack an end. It is in fact easier for something
with a beginning to have no end than for an end to exist of something with no
beginning. 42 If then matter is not a created thing, nothing can be made from
it either, and if creation from it is impossible, it will not even be matter, for
matter is what things are made of. Everything moves from its start to its
destruction and to the start of being something else because it is subject to
the hand of its maker. 43 Since therefore matter had its ending from the
moment when the world was made of it, so too it had its beginning. Any
destruction entails a construction, any undoing a doing up, and any ending a
beginning. If we conclude that from its changing and ending matter had a
beginning, who else could have caused it but God? 44 God then is the only
thing not made: he can undo other stuff but he cannot be undone himself. He
will persist for ever in the state he has always been in because he has no other
source of being: his origin and birth depend on nothing else which could
undo him by its alteration. He exists of himself, as I said in Book 1 [7.13],
and for that reason he is as he wished to be, impassible, unchangeable,
unmarred, blessed and eternal.

45Theconclusion thatCicero came to now looksmuch more absurd. 'If
the basic material,’ he says, 'is not made by god, then earth, water, air and

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

145

fire were also not made by god.’ 39 46 There’s a clever evasion of peril! He
made his first assumption as if it needed no proof, though it was much more
insecure than the point it was made for. 'If matter was not made by god,’ he
says, 'then neither was the world made by god.’ 47 He has preferred a false
conclusion from a false premise to a sound conclusion from a sound
premise: uncertainties should be tested against certainties, but he has taken
his proof off an uncertainty in order to overthrow a certainty. 48 The world
was made by divine providence: Trismegistus says so, but I will omit him,
and the SibylIine verses say it, butl will omit them; 40 the prophets attest the
making of the world and god’s making of it with one breath and one voice,
but I will not mention them; it is even agreed among virtually all the
philosophers: the Pythagoreans, theStoics and the Peripatetics all say it, and
they are the chief schools of philosophy. 49 It was also an accepted and
undoubted fact from the Seven Sages in the early days right down to Socrates
and Plato, until after many generations came the lone lunatic Epicurus, who
presumed to deny what was absolutely obvious, no doubt from a desire to be
original, in order to establish a school with his own name on it. 50 Because
he could not discover a new line, he decided to chuck out the old ones,
simply to look different from everyone else: but philosophers have all come
yapping round to prove him wrong. It is a surer thing that the world was
constructed by providence than that its material got stuck together by
providence. 51 itisnotto be thought that theworld was not made by divine
providence just because its matter was not so made; rather, because the
world was made by divine providence, so also the stuff of it was made
divinely. 52 It is more credible that matter was made by God because of his
omnipotence than that the world was not made by God, because nothing can
be made without purpose, system and plan.

53 This is not Cicero's fault, however, but his school’s. When he
developed his discussion against the nature of the gods, about which the
philosophers were jabbering on, he thought in his ignorance of the truth that
all divinity had to go. 54 He could do away with the gods because they did
not exist anyway, but when he tried to abolish divine providence, which does
exist in the one and only God, proof failed him, and inevitably he got into a
holewhich hecould not get out of, because he was fighting against the truth.
That is where I’ve got him pinned down and stuck, because Lucilius, who
was arguing the contrary, fell silent. 55 This is the hinge of the argument,

39 Cf. 11 above.

40 IMF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 6; orac. Sib. fr. 1.11.

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and everything turns on it. If Cotta can get himself out of the whirlpool, let
him: he must bring forward arguments to explain that matter has always
existed and no providence made it; he must show how anything of mass and
weight could either exist without a maker, or manage to change and leave off
being what it had always been so as to start being what it never was. 56 If he
can prove that, then I will indeed agree that the world too was not made by
divine providence: but my agreement will merely catch him in a different
trap. 57 He’ll find himself back where he won't want to be, saying that
matter, the stuff of the world, is there by nature, and so is the world too,
which is made of matter, while I shall contend that nature itself is God. 58 No
one can do wonderful things, things consistent with supreme reason, that is,
unless he has the mind, the foresight and the capacity for it. 59 It will
therefore be the case that God made everything and that nothing can exist at
all that does not derive its origin from God.

60 Every time our friend Cicero plays the Epicurean and doesn't want
the world to be made by God, he usually asks 41 with what hands, machinery
and levers, and with what effort god accomplished the great work. If you
could have been there at the time when he did it, perhaps you would have
seen! 61 But to prevent man seeing his works, God refused to bring him into
theworld until everything was ready. 62 Notthat he could have been brought
in: how would he subsist when the sky above was still being made and the
earth below was still being built, when wet things were going solid perhaps,
paralysed by too much stiffness, or were going hard in the solidifying
cooking of a fiery heat? How would he live with no sun in place, and no
food, or animals in being? M an had to be last: by then the last touch had been
given to the world and to everything else. 63 Finally, holy scripture teaches
that man was the last work of God: he was brought into this world as if into
a house ready prepared; everything had been made for his sake. 64 Even the
poets acknowledge it: after dealing with the making of the world and the
forming of all its animals, Ovid then wrote as follows [M et. 1.76-78]: 'An
animal more sacred than these, more capable of lofty thought and of
dominion over the rest, was missing: man was born.' We must reckon it very
wrong to investigate what God wanted hidden.

65 Cicero didn’t ask his question from a desire to listen and learn, how¬
ever, but to carry his point, sure that none could respond: as if, just because
we can't see how it happened, that should make us think creation was not
divine. 66 If you had been brought up in a house built and furnished by an

41 Cic. N.D. 1.19.

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architect and had never seen building materials, would you have thought the
house had not been built by someone just because you didn't know how it
was built? You'd be asking the same question about the house that you are
asking about the world, with what hands, with what tools a man could have
constructed so massive a work, especially if you saw huge blocks of stone,
quantities of concrete, vast columns, and the whole thing towering to the
sky. Plainly, you would think it went beyond the limit of human might only
because you did not know that it was not made by might as much as by
thought and skill. 42 67 But if man, not a perfect creature at all, achieves more
even so by exercise of thought than his slender physical strength permits,
why should you think it incredible when people say the world was made by
God? Heisperfect: in him wisdom can have no limit and might no measure.

68 His works are visible to the eye, but how he made them is not visible
even to the mind’s eye, because, as Hermes says, mortal cannot approach
immortal, nor temporal perpetual, nor corruptible incorruptible; cannot get
close, that is, and pursue it intellectually. 43 That is why no creature on earth
has yet obtained a sight of things in heaven, because its body is a sort of
guarding fence about it stopping it seeing everything with a free and easy
perception. 69 Anyone who wants to know what cannot be explained must
realise his folly, which is to reach beyond the limit of his nature and not to
understand how far a man may reach. 70 Finally, when God revealed the
truth to man, he wanted man to know only those things that were relevant to
man to know for the conduct of his life; on anything referable to a profane
and inquisitive curiosity he said nothing, so that it should be secret. 71 Why
then seek a knowledge you cannot have? it wouldn't make you happier if
you could. Wisdom is perfect in man if he learns that God is one, and that
everything was made by him.

The stages of creation

9.1Now that we have refuted those who think otherwise than the truth has it
about the world and God its maker, let us return to the divine making of the
world. The record is in the hidden writings of holy religion.

2 First of all things God made the heavens, and suspended them on high
to be his own place, the seat of God the founder. Then he built the earth, and
set it below the heavens, for man to inhabit with the rest of the animal

42 Cf.Cic. N.D.2.15.

43 IMF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 7.

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species. He decided that water should wash around it and contain it. 3 His
own dwelling place he marked and filled with bright lights, the sun, that is,
and the gleaming orb of the moon and the radiant signs of the twinkling
stars; on earth he set a darkness, because it is the opposite of these; it has no
light of itself unless it receive some from the heavens. In the heavens he set
a lasting light, and the higher beings and perpetual life; on earth, in contrast,
he set darkness, lower beings and death. 4 These are as far distant from those
above as evil is from good and vice from virtue.

5 He also arranged for two parts of the earth itself to be set against each
other and to differ from each other, east and west, that is. 44 The east is
attached to God because he is the source of light and the illuminator of the
world and he makes us rise toward eternal life, whereas the west belongs to
that disturbed and depraved intent, because it hides the light away and ever
brings on darkness, and it makes people fall and perish in their si ns. 6 J ust as
light belongs to the east and just as light is the context of a rational life, so
darkness belongs to the west, and darkness is the context of death and
destruction. 7 Then he measured out the other areas on the same basis, south
and north, which are connected to the first two areas. 8 The one that is more
ablaze with the heat of the sun is close to the east and sticks with it, while the
one that is stiff with cold and perpetual frost belongs with the furthest west.
Cold is the contrary of heat just as light is of darkness. 9 As heat is close to
light, then, so south is to east, and as cold is close to dark, so the north zone
is to the west. To each area he allotted its own weather, spring to the orient,
that is, and summer to the southern quarter; autumn belongs to the west, and
winter to the north. 10 In the two second areas of south and north there is a
metaphor of life and death, because life depends on warmth but cold is the
context of death. Warmth comes from fire, moreover, but cold from water.

11 Day and night he also made to the pattern of the four quarters: they
were to produce a length and cycle of seasons to roll round in alternating
succession for ever, in periodswhich wecall years. Day, which isbroughtto
us by sunrise, necessarily belongs to God, I ike all things whatsoever that are
good, while night, brought on by sunset, belongs of course to the one we
called God's rival. Well aware of the future as he was in this matter, God
created these two deliberately so that true religion and bogus superstitions
should both havesomevisibleimage. 12Thesun which rises every day may
do so in solitude (which Cicero wants to see as the origin of its name,

44 L. constructs the story of creation around his theory of opposing elements. See Perrin
(1981), 352-56.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

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because in blocking out the other stars it alone is visible 45 ), but just as it is
the true light, of perfect plenitude, illuminating everything with its powerful
heat and flashing brightness, so too in God, alone though he is, there is
perfect supremacy, virtue and brightness. 13 Night, however, which we say
belongs to the wicked anti-god, reveals his own many different cults by way
of image: 14 although there appear to be countless stars winking and twink¬
ling, nevertheless, because their lights are not full and steady, they cannot
promote any heat nor overcome darkness by their quantity.

15 Duality is thus the principle of it: two things have opposed and
contrary powers, heat and wet, and God planned them wonderfully well for
the sustenance and regeneration of everything. 16Though God's virtue is in
fire and heat, if he had nottempered hisburning energy with an admixture of
wet and cold, nothing could have come to birth and held its own without
perishing in instant conflagration at the point of starting to be whatever it
was. 17 Hence certain philosophers, and poets too, have said that the world
exists in a 'concord of discord’; but they failed to see through to the plan.

18 Heraclitus said that the source of everything was fire; Thales said it
was water. Each man saw something, but each was also wrong, because if
either thing had been the only thing in existence, water could not have come
from fire, nor fire from water: it is sounder to say that all things have been
brought into being from a simultaneous combi nation of the two. 19 True, fire
cannot be combined with water because they have a hostility for each other,
and if they do come together, whichever gets the better of the other will
necessarily destroy it; but their substances can be combined: the substance
of fire is heat, and the substance of water is wetness. 20 Ovid was right [M et.
1.430-33]: 'When wet and heat have established a good blend, they con¬
ceive, and everything arises from those two. Though fire is in conflict with
water, a hot wet steam is the creator of everything; for birth, a concord of
discord is appropriate.’ 21 One element is masculine, so to speak, and the
other feminine, one active, the other passive. Hence the arrangement of our
ancestors, that a sacrament of fire and water should sanctify the bonds of
marriage, because it is by heat and wet that the offspring of living things
become incarnate and animate for their lives. 22 Every living thing is made
of spirit and flesh: wet is the corporeal context, and heat is the spiritual. We
can learn this from the offspring of birds: eggsarefull of a viscous liquid; if
they are not nursed with creative warmth, the wet cannot become body nor

45 Any connection between sol, sun, and solus, alone, such as L. attributes to Cicero here,
is mistaken. The two words have different roots.

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can the body become animate. 23 People sent into exile used to be banned
from fire and water; wicked as they were, they were human beings, and as it
still seemed wrong in those days to exercise capital punishment, 24 banning
the use of what human life is made of was thus a virtual death penalty for
anyone so sentenced. These two things are considered so primary that people
do not believe that human birth or life are possible without them. 25 One of
them we share with all the rest of the animals, but the other has been
vouchsafed to humankind alone. We have the use of fire because we are a
heavenly and immortal animal, and it has been granted us in proof of our
immortality, because fire is of heaven; it is by nature never still and always
striving upwards, and that is the pattern of life. 26 Because all the other
animalsaretotally mortal, they havetheuseonly of water, which isa corporeal
and earthly thing; it is by nature never still and is always seeking its lowest
level, and that is a figure of death. Animals do not look up to heaven and are
not acquainted with religion because the use of fireisforeignto them. 27 Only
God who made them can know the origin of his two primary elements and
how he kindled fire and distilled water.

C reation of animals and man

XCX1U pon completion of the world, he ordered animals of different species
with different shapes to be made, both greater and lesser. They were made in
pairs, one each of either sex, that is, and the sky, the earth and the seas were
filled with their offspring, and God gave them all food from the earth
according to their sort so that they could be of use to mankind, some for
food, of course, and some for clothing, and those that were of great strength
to help in the tilling of the soil: hence their title, beasts of burden. 46

2 When everything was thus organised in an admirable arrangement, he
decided to set up for himself an eternal kingship and to procreate countless
souls whom he would endow with immortality. 3 Of his own act he made
himself something which had senses and understanding; something, that is,
in the shape of his own form [Gen. 127], which is the ultimate in perfection:
he made man out of the mud of the earth; hence the name 'man', because
man was made of soil. 47 4 Notably, Plato says that the human form is godlike
[Rep. 501b]; so too the Sibyl: G 'Man is an icon of me, possessing true

46 L. makes play with the first syllables of iuuare, to help, and iumentum, beast of burden,
but again, the two words do not have a common root.

47 L. now makes pi ay with the first three letters of homo, man, and humus, soil. A gain, there
is no connection.

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reason.' 48 5 The same tradition about the making of man is also, despite some
corruption, in the poets: man was made from mud they say, by Prometheus.
They are wrong not about the event but about its agent. 6 They had had no
contact with literature containing the truth; they had merely absorbed into
their own poetry what had been handed down in the predictions of the pro¬
phets and kept in a god's shrine, despite its corrupt derivation from fantasies
and vague prejudice; truth usually gets diluted like that, and corrupted in
popular tal k, with everybody adding their bitto the tradition. It was certainly
stupid of them to attribute to man something so wonderfully and divinely
wrought. 7 What need was there for man to be made from mud when he
could have been created in the same way that Prometheus was born of
lapetus? If Prometheus was a man, then he could have procreated a man but
could not have made one; the fact that he was not born of the gods is shown
by his punishment on M ount Caucasus. 8 But no one calls his father lapetus
or his uncle Titan gods, because the lofty height of kingship belonged to
Saturn alone, and Saturn achieved divine honours, together with all his
posterity, because of that supremacy. There are plenty of arguments with
which to refute this fiction of the poets.

9There is general agreementthattheflood was produced in order to root
out and destroy the great wickedness in the world. Philosophers, poets and
historians of antiquity all say so, and they particularly agree on the point
with what the prophets say. 10 So if the flood was brought about deliberately
so that evil which had developed amongst too great a number of people
could be destroyed, how can Prometheus be a maker of man when his son
Deucalion was, according to those same authorities, the only man to be
saved because of his sense of justice? How can the earth have been filled
with people so swiftly from one family in one generation? 11 They must have
muddled this point as they did the earlier one, because they did not know
when the cataclysm occurred on earth, or who for his sense of justice
deserved to be saved when the human race was perishing, or how or with
whom he was saved: yet all of it is explained in prophetic literature. It is
plain, therefore, that what they say about Prometheus' creativity is false.

12 I said, however, that the poets did not usually tell total lies: they
wrapped what they were saying in figures of speech, and so kept it obscure.
I do not say that they have lied: rather, Prometheus was the first person ever
to shape a likeness of man from soft and squeezy mud; the art of making
statues and likenesses started with him; he lived in the time of J upiter, when

48 Orac. Sib. 8.402.

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temples were first being built and the new patterns of worship were
developing. 13 T he truth has thus been stained with falsehood; what was being
called God’s creation came to be attributed to a man who copied God’s work.
The creation of a true and living man out of mud is God’s work. 14 So says
Hermes too; he did not merely say that man was made in God’s image, but
tried also to explain the subtlety of the plan for the shaping of every indivi¬
dual limb of the human body, sinceevery limb is just as important for its use
as for its beauty. 49 15 Even the Stoics are trying to do this when they talk of
providence, and Cicero hasfollowed them in several places; 50 but hetouches
only lightly on a topic of abundant richness. I shall pass it by for the moment,
because I have recently written a book devoted to the topic for my reader
Demetrianus. 51 16 What I cannot pass by in this context is the statement of
certain mistaken philosophers who say human beings and the other animals
sprang from the earth without any creator. Hence Vergil’s observation [G.
2.430-31]: 'the iron progeny of men upreared their heads from the hard
fields.' T he people most i nsi stent on thi s i dea are the ones w ho say there i s no
providence: the Stoics attribute the making of living things to divine skill.

17 Aristotle freed himself from the toil and trouble of this by saying that
the world had always existed; there was therefore no beginning for the
human race nor for the other creatures: they always had existed and always
would. 52 18 But since we can see every individual creature not already
present both beginning its existence and ending it, it is inevitable that the
whole species began to exist at some point in time, and that because it began
it will cease to exist at some point in time. 19 All things are necessarily
contained within three times, past, present and future. Beginning belongs to
the past, existence to the present, and break-up to the future. 20 AII three are
visible in every single human being: we begin when we get born, we exist
when weare alive, and weceasewhen wedie. Hence people’s desire for the
Three Fates, one to cast on man’s life, a second to weave it, and a third to
break the thread and end it. 21 Within the whole human race only time
present is visible: yet from it we can grasp both time past (the beginning, that
is) and time to come (the break-up). 22 Because man exists, it is plain that he
began some time: nothing can exist without a beginning; and because he
begins, some time it is plain he will cease: any one thing constructed of
mortal elements cannot be immortal.

49 IMF Corp. Herm. 1.12 and vol. 4 fr. 8a.

50 See Leg. 1.27; l\l ,D. 2.133; Rep. 4.1.

51 De Opificio Dei, composed shortly before this work.

52 Cf. Arist. Cael. 1.10; G .A. 2.1; perhaps derived from Cic. Ac. 2.119; Tusc. 1.70.

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23 We all die, but we do it individually: it is possible that we may all die
in some chance event together, from a universal dearth perhaps, a thing that
tends to ravage particular areas, or from a plague worldwide (plague usually
devastates particular towns or regions), or from a fire striking the earth, such
as is said to have occurred under Phaethon, or from a great flood, like that
under Deucalion, when apart from one man the whole human race was
wiped out. 24 If that flood was accidental, it could have happened that even
he, the only survivor, perished; but if he was reserved by the will of divine
providence, which cannot be denied, to regenerate mankind, then it is plain
that the life and death of the human race are in the power of God. But if death
can befall the whole of a species because it can befall it here and there, it is
plain that a species came into being ata certain point, and its end isdeclared
by its frailty as much as its beginning is. 25 If that is true, Aristotle will not
be able to resist the conclusion that the world too had its beginning. And if
Plato and Epicurus can win that much from Aristotle, then Plato and
Aristotle, who thought that the world would exist for ever, will, for all their
eloquence, reluctantly yield to Epicurus the consequence that it also has an
end. 26 This will be treated at greater length in the final book. For the
moment let us return to the beginning of man. 53

Against spontaneous generation

ILlThey say that at particular rotations of heaven and at particular shifts of
the constellations a moment of ripeness arrives for sowing living things;
when the earth was new, it kept the procreative seed in little pouches which
it produced in the likeness of wombs: Lucretius says on the subject [5.808]:
'Wombs developed, attached to the earth by roots.’When they were ripe, at
the instance of nature they burst, and poured forth living things in a delicate
state. 2 Then the earth itself overflowed with a liquid like milk, and the
living things were fed by its nourishment. How could they have endured or
avoided theeffectsof heat and cold, or even get born at all when the sun was
burning them or the cold chilling them? Oh, at the beginning of the world,
they say, there was neither winter nor summer but a perpetual and even-
tempered springtime. 3 Then why do we see none of this going on now?
Because, they say, for animals to get born it only needed to happen once;
after they had started on their existence, the earth left off producing because
the ani mals had been given the power of procreati on, and the cl i mate changed.

53 See 7.14.5ff.

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4How easy it is to disprove rubbish! First, nothing can existin this world
which does not stay as it begins. Sun, moon and stars did notfail to be there
at the start, and when they were there they did not fail to have their orbits,
and the divine control which moderates and regulates their courses was also
there with them. 5 Second, if things were to be as they say, the existence of
divine providence is inevitable, and they tumble into the pit they most seek
to avoid. 6 For when the animals were not yet born, someone simply arranged
for it to happen, so that the world should not be empty and bristling
untended. B ut for them to be able to be born of the earth with no parents to
do their bit, great foresight and preparation were needed; further, for the
liquid that came out of the earth to be turned into bodies of all the different
sorts, and for those bodies to pour forth out of the pouches which had
protected them, as if they were coming out of a maternal womb now that
they had their programme for life and sentience, miraculous and intricate
foresight was needed. 7 Let us suppose, however, that it too was an accidental
event; what followed could not possibly be haphazard, for the earth to ooze
with instant milk, I mean, and for the climate to be so equable. 8 If it is
agreed that all this did happen so that the new-born animals could have their
food or not be at risk, then someone with a divine intelligence must have
foreseen it all. Now, who has that power of foresight except God?

9 Let us see, nevertheless, whether what they say, birth of peopleout of
earth, could have happened. If anyone stopped to think for a moment about
the length of time and the ways in which a child is brought up, he will surely
realise that those children born of the earth could not have been reared
without someone to see to them. 10 They would have had to lie where they
were dropped many months, until their muscles developed and they could
move and change place, which scarcely happens within a year. 11 Do ask
yourself whether a child can lie for months and months in the same place
and posture it was in when born without dying half-drowned and half-rotted
in a mixture of the liquid which the earth was offering for its sustenance and
the excretions of its own body! 12 It is wholly impossible for someone not to
have taken it up - unless perhaps all animals are not born weak but tough -
but they never thought of saying that. 13 The whole train of thought is
impossibly futile, if indeed it can be called a train of thought when its aim is
no thinking at all. Anyone who says that everything was born spontaneously
and who makes no allowance for divine providence is not pursuing but
destroying a train of thought. 14 But if nothing can be made or get born
without an act of thought, then the existence of divine providence is obvious:
thought is exactly its mode.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

155

God who made all things therefore made man. 15 Cicero, despite his
ignorance of holy writ, saw it nevertheless; in book One of Laws he recorded
the same tradition as the prophets. I supply his words [Leg. 1.22]. 16 'This
living creature, with its foresight, wisdom, and variety, its shrewdness, its
memory, its abundance of thought and decision, which we call man, was
produced by god most high on some exceptional basis. It is the only one of
all the species and types of living things which partakes of reason and
thought; all the rest are quite without.’ 17 Can you see a man there who, for
all his distance from a knowledge of the truth, yet, because he could gaze on
an image of wisdom, did understand that man could not have been born
except of God? 18 Even so, we need divine evidence, in case the human
evidence is inadequate. The Sibyl affirms that man is the work of God G ,
'who is god alone, founder, unconquerable, initiator, and he in person made
fast the stamp of his shape, and he in person composed the nature of all
mortals, he the begetter of life.' 54 Holy writ says the same.

19 God has therefore performed the task of a real father, himself creating
our body, himself infusing the spirit by which we breathe; all that we are is
his. 20 How he did it he would have told us if we needed to know, just as he
has told us all the other things that have brought us knowledge both of our
original error and of the true light.

Contrary elements in man; Paradise, Fall

32.1When he had shaped the first male to his own likeness, then he shaped
a female after the likeness of the man, so that the two sexes could combine
together and procreate offspring and fill the whole earth with their number.
2 It was in the making of the human being that he brought together and
fulfilled his plan for the two materials which we said were at odds with each
other, fire and water. 55 3 When the body was made, he breathed spirit into it
from the living source of his own spirit (which is everlasting), so that it could
bear a likeness to the world itself, which is also constructed of contrary elements.
For it is composed of spirit and body, or virtually of heaven and earth, since
the spirit by which we live in coming from God comes from heaven, and the
body comes from the earth, being shaped, as we said, from its mud.

4 You may not be sure whether to count Empedocles with the poets or
with the philosophers, because he wrote upon the nature of things in verse,

54 Orac. Sib. fr. 5.

55 See 9.19ff. above.

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as did Lucretius and Varro in Rome; 56 anyway, he proposed four basic ele¬
ments, fire, air, water and earth, possibly following Trismegistus, who said
that 'our bodies were composed out of these four elements by god: 5 they
had some element of fire, air, earth and water in them without actually being
fire, air, earth or water.’ 57 That is not wrong, for there is a measure of earth in
our flesh, of liquid in our blood, of air in our breath, and of fire in our vital
warmth. 6 But blood cannot be separated from the body as water can from
earth, nor can ourvital warmth be separated from ourbreath asfirecan from
air. That is the extent to which, out of all the elements, there are only two
whose whole purpose is fulfilled in the making of our body.

7 M an is therefore composed of elements which are contrary and hostile
just as the world is composed of good and bad, light and dark and life and
death; and god arranged for these two to fight it out in man so that if the spirit
which springs from god is victorious man will be immortal and live in
perpetual light, but if the body conquers the soul and brings it under its
control, man will be in everlasting darkness and death. 8 Its power is not
such that it can wholly destroy unjust souls, but it can keep them punished
for ever. That punishment we call 'second death'; it is itself everlasting, just
as immortality is too. 9 We define first death thus: it is the undoing of the
nature of living things; or thus: it is the separation of body and soul. Second
death is as follows: it is the suffering of eternal pain; or thus: it is the damna¬
tion of souls to eternal torment according to their deserts. This does not affect
the dumb creation: their souls break up at death because they are derived
from the air which all living things have in common and not from God.

10 In this association of heaven and earth, which is given expression in
the figure of man, a superior role is taken by what belongs to God, which is,
of course, the soul; it has command of the body. A n inferior role is taken by
what belongs to the devil, which is simply the body: because it is of the
earth, it must be subject to the soul as earth is to heaven, 11 for the body is a
sort of container, to be used by our heavenly spirit as its temporal home. There
are duties for either: what comes of heaven and God has a duty to command,
and what comes of earth and the devil has a duty to perform accordingly.

12 The poi nt did not escape that bad man Sallust, 58 who says [Cat. 1.2]:
'All our energy lies in soul and body. 13 We employ the soul to command

56 See Quint, inst. 1.4.4.

57 NF Corp. Herm. vol. 3, p. 4.

58 For Sallust's poor reputation, see Dio Cassius 43.9.2 (maladministration) and A. Gellius
17.18 citing Varro (adultery). Syme (1964), 269-73, is sceptical. In 1.21.42, Sallust is called
'learned', and in 3.29.8 simply 'the historian'.

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157

and the body to serve.’ F i ne, had he I ived as he spoke. 14 I n fact, he served
his pleasures, most disgustingly, and undid his understanding by the depravity
of his life. If the soul is fire, as we have shown, then I ike fire it should aim for
heaven, so as not to be extinguished; it should aim for immortality, that is,
whose place is heaven; and just as fire cannot burn and live unless sustained
by some rich stuff off which it can feed, so the food and stuff of the soul is
justice and by justice alone is it kept alive.

15 A fter G od had created man to the pattern I have set forth, he put hi m
in Paradise, in a garden, that is, of great fertility and beauty. He planted the
garden in its eastern parts with every sort of timber and tree so that man
could be fed from their various fruits and serve God the father with total
devotion, free from any labour. 16Then he gave man precise commandments;
if heobserved them, hewould remain immortal, but if he transgressed them
he would suffer death. There was also this instruction, that he should not
taste of one tree, which was in the middle of Paradise, in which God had put
the knowledge of good and evil.

17 Then that accuser, jealous of God’s works, aimed all his deceit and
cunning at bringing man down, in order to lose him his immortality. 18 First
he deceitfully lured the woman to pick the forbidden fruit, and through her
he persuaded the man too to transgress god’s law. Once man had the
knowledge of good and evil, he became ashamed of his nakedness, and hid
himself from the face of God, which he had not done previously. 19 Then
God gave sentence on the sinners and ejected man from Paradise to get his
food by toil, and he walled off Paradise with fire, to prevent man getting in
until the final judgment is given on earth and God calls the good men who
worship him back to the same place, death being now removed, as holy writ
tells us, and so does the Sibyl of Erythrae when she says, G 'Those who
honour the true and everlasting god inherit life, and they dwell together in
the fertile garden of Paradise for the whole span of time.' 59 2 0 Because these
things belong at the end, i will deal with them in the final part of this work;
for the moment let me explain what comes first.

Death thus followed man in accordance with God’s judgment, which is
what the Sibyl also says in her poem as follows: 5 'M an, formed by the holy
hands of god, was treacherously sent wandering by the snake to go to hi state
of death and to gain the knowledge of good and evil.' 60 21 Thus man’s life
became limited, but long: it was to last a thousand years. This is set forth in

59 Orac. Sib. fr. 3.46-48.

60 Orac. Sib. 8.260-62.

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holy scripture and is generally known to all; Varro could not ignore it, and
strove instead to prove by argument 'why the ancients were thought to have
lived a thousand years. 22 In Egypt,' he says, 'they count months instead of
years: it is not the circuit of the sun through the twelve signs which makes up
a year, but the moon, which works through that circle of signs in the space of
thirty days.' That argument is transparently bogus; no one exceeded a
thousand years then, 23 but nowadays, people who make it to a hundred (a
very frequent occurrence) obviously live twelve hundred months. We have it
on good authority that a hundred and twenty is often reached. 24 B ut because
Varro did not know why or when human life was shortened, he shortened it
himself, even though he knew that a life of fourteen hundred months was
possible.

F lood, Hebrews, Canaanites, Gentiles

33.1 Later, when God saw that the world was full of wickedness and crime,
he decided to destroy the human race in a flood. But in order to restore the
population he picked out one man, the unique surviving example, amid the
corruption, of a just man. 2 Though this man was six hundred years old, he
built an ark, as God had required, in which he, his wife, his three sons and
three daughters-in-law were all preserved, even though the water covered
every mountain top. 3 When the world was dry again, God cursed the injustice
of the previous generation, and in case length of life should again be cause
for evil machinations, slowly, generation by generation, he reduced the human
lifespan and set its limit at a hundred and twenty years, not to be exceeded.
4 When Noah came out of the ark, as holy scripture tells, he tilled the soil
with care and planted a vine with his own hand. That is the rebuttal of those
who think wine was invented by Bacchus. Noah was many ages older, not
only than B acchus, but also than Saturn and U ranus.

5 W hen he took the first fruit off that vine, he was happy, and drank till
he was drunk, and lay there naked. He was seen by one of his sons, called
Ham. Ham did not cover up his father’s nakedness, but went off and told his
brothers. They took a cloak, went in with their eyes averted and covered him
up. 6 W hen their father recognised what they had done, he disinherited his
son Ham and banished him. Ham fled, and settled in the part of the earth now
called Arabia; it is called Canaan, and its people Canaanites, from his
name. 61 7 These were the first people not to know God, because their leader

61 L. spells Ham Cham and Canaan Chanaan.

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159

and founder, after the curse upon him, did not follow his father in the
worship of God, thus bequeathing to his descendants ignorance of the god¬
head.

8 From this nation came all the neighbouring peoples in ever growing
numbers. Noah’s own descendants were called Hebrews: worship of God
became their abiding thing. 9 Later, even they multiplied beyond measure,
and when their land became too small for them, the young men went off, on
their parents’ instructions or of their own accord, to look for new homes for
themselves, forced to it by need, and they spread this way and that, occupy¬
ing every island and the whole earth; they lost contact with their original
holy stock, and set up new ways of life for themselves and new institutions
of their choice.

10 Those who occupied Egypt were first to start gazing at the skies and
worshipping what they saw there. Because they lived without roofs overhead,
the climate being what it is, and because no clouds obscure the sky in those
parts, they could mark the orbits of the stars and what they brought to pass;
frequent worship increased the care and the scope of their watching. 11 In
due course, persuaded by certain portents whose actual authors we will
reveal in a moment, they devised figures of animals for worship, to generate
portents.

12 The rest of them, once spread all over the earth, came to wonder at
elements of the world, worshipping sky, sun, earth and sea, but without
statues and temples, and they made sacrifice to them in the open, until in the
process of time they made temples and statues for their most powerful kings
and began to worship the statues with animal sacrifice and incense. Separa¬
tion from knowledge of God thus began to produce the Gentiles. 13 it is a
mistake to claim that worship of gods has existed from the start of things,
and that worship of God came only after pagan rites; it is only thought to be
a later invention because the fountainhead of truth was unknown. Let us now
go back to the beginning of the world.

On angels and demons, good and bad

lAlWhen the number of people began to grow again, God did what he had
done in the beginning: he sent his angels to guard and tend the human race;
he foresaw that the devil, to whom he had given control of the earth at the
start, might corrupt or even destroy man with his deceptions, and he told the
angels before all else not to lose the worth of their celestial substance by
letting contact with earth stain them. Presumably he warned them not to do

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what he knew they would do in order to deny them hope of pardon. 2 As they
continued to spend time with humans, that treacherous lord of the earth little
by little habituated them to the lure of wickedness, and sullied them by
unions with women. 3 Then, when they were not acceptable in heaven
because of the sins in which they had plunged themselves, they fell to earth,
and thus out of angels of God the devil made them henchmen and servants of
his own.

4 Because their offspring were neither angels nor men, but had a half and
half nature, they were no more acceptable below than their parents were
above. 5 So two sorts of demon were created, one celestial and one earthly.
The earthly ones are the unclean spirits, authors of all wickedness that
occurs, and the devil is their chief. 6 Hence Trismegistus' name for him,
demoniarch. 62 Philologists say they are called demons from 6 'daemon',
'expert', that is, and 'knowing', 63 for they think of them as gods. They do
know much of the future, but not all of it, since they cannot know God’s
thinking from within, and that is why they usually arrange for their responses
to emerge in ambiguous form.

7 The poets know that they are demons and they say so too. Hesiod puts
it as follows [Op. 122-23]: 'Some are demons by will of great Zeus, good
spirits of earth, guardians of mortal men.’ 8 That was said because God had
sentthem as guardians of the human race; yet even they, destroyers of people
as they are, still want to be seen as guardians, so that they are worshipped
and God is not.

9 The philosophers also discuss them. Plato attempted to express their
natures in his Symposium, 64 and Socrates used to say that he was attended by
a constant demon, which had stuck to him since his boyhood; his life was
governed by its every wish and whim.

10 All the skill and power of the M agi depend upon the influence of
these beings also; they summon the M agi, who then falsify what people see,
hoodwinking and blinding them so that they don't see what is there and
think they see what isn't. 11 They are, as I say, defiled and desperate spirits
which roam all over the earth and work for the perdition of people as solace
for their own perdition: 12 they fill everything with treachery, fraud, deceit
and misguidance; they attach themselves to individuals, they occupy the

62 Asclep. 28, in NF Corp. Herm. vol. 2, p. 334.

63 L. takes as equivalent (so had Archilochus and Plato earlier) two different Greek roots,
da-, learn, and da-/dai-, distribute (hence probably dalmon as distributor of people's fates, a
word often used by the Greek poets as a rough synonym for theos, god).

64 202e.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

161

gates of every household, and they get themselves called genii (that is the
Latin for demons). 13 People worship them in their shrines at home, they
pour wine to them every day, they are wittingly venerating demons as if they
were earthly gods, the di spellers of those evils which the demons themselves
are doing and causi ng. 14 B ecause these spi rits are siender and hard to grasp,
they work themselves into people’s bodies and secretly get at their guts,
wrecking their health, causing illness, scaring their wits with dreams, unsett¬
ling their minds with madness, till people are forced to run for help to them
in troubles of their making.

The pious have nothing to fear from demons

ISulThe explanation of all these misunderstandings is a puzzle for those
who lack the truth. They think that when gods lay off doing harm (and harm
is all they have the power to do), then they are doing good. 2 Since, it may
perhaps be said, they have this capacity to do harm, they ought to be
worshipped to prevent them doing it. They certainly do harm, but only to
people who fear them, people unprotected by thesublimeand powerful hand
of God, people unacquainted with the sacrament of truth. 3 But they are
frightened of just people, worshippers of God, that is: when adjured in his
name they leave the bodies they occupy, and the words of the good are like
whips, flogging them not only into admission that they are demons but also
into revealing the cult titles that are used for them in their temples. This they
often do in the presence of their own worshippers, to the shame not simply of
their cult but also of theirown position in it, because they cannotlieto God
in whose name they are being adjured nor can they lie to the just whose
words torment them. 4 Hence the howls and cries they often utter, saying
they are being beaten and are on fire and are dying any moment: 5 such is the
power of the knowledge of God, and such the power of his justice. The only
people to whom they can do bad are the ones they have in their own power.
6 Hermes says conclusively that those who know God are not only safe from
the attacks of demons but are not even i n the gri p of fate. 5 ' Piety,' he says, 'is
the one safeguard. The pious are not in the power of any evil demon nor of
fate. God protects the pious from all evil. The one and only good within
man’s power is piety.’ What he means by piety he explains elsewhere as
follows: 5 'Piety is the know I edge of god.' 65 7 H i s di sci pi e A sclepi us has also
explained the idea at greater length in that Perfect Discourse which he wrote

65 NF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 10; Corp. Herm. (Poem.) 9.4.

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to the king. 66 8 They each declare 'Demons are enemies and tormentors of
men’, which is why Trismegistus calls them G 'wicked angels’; he was well
aware that they turned into earthly creatures upon corruption of their
celestial nature. 67

Evil works of demons

i&lTheir inventions include astrology, entrail inspection, augury, anything
called an oracle, necromancy, and magic, together with any other evil that
people practise openly or secretly. All are bogus on their own terms, as the
Sibyl of Erythrae says: G 'All the things that mindless men chase after in the
daylight, all are deceptive.’ 68 2 But people think it is true because of the
presence of exactly those inventors of it, who put on a false divinity (it
would not suit to reveal the truth), and use people's own credulity to fool
them. 3 These are the ones who taught people to make statues and like¬
nesses; in order to divert attention away from worship of the true God, they
copied the features of dead kings, giving them a special attractiveness, and
had them set up and consecrated, and took on their names themselves, I ike a
sort of mask. 4 But when the M agi and those popularly and rightly called
evildoers are practising their accursed arts, they invoke them by their real
names, the heavenly names that can be read in holy scripture.

5 In order to create confusion and to fill human hearts with error, these
unclean vagabond spirits sow falsehood mixed with truth. B ecause there are
many angel spirits in heaven and God is the one lord and father of them all,
so they have pretended that there are many heavenly beings and one king
J upiter over them all: but they have wrapped thetruth up in bogus names and
kept it out of sight. 6 As I explained in the beginning, God needs no name
because he is the only god, and though the angels are immortal, they do not
allow themselves to be called gods nor do they wantto be: theironeand only
duty is to attend to the wishes of God and to do absolutely nothing without
his command. 7 The world is governed by God, we say, as a province is by
its governor; 69 no one would say that in governing the province a governor’s
staff are his equals, despite the fact that their work keeps it going. 8 I ndeed,

66 The most commonly cited of the Hermetic works, it was avail able to L. in both the Greek
version and in a Latin translation. The translation available to L. was not, however, the same as
the one used by Augustine over a century laterinciv. 8.23-24, 26.

67 Asclep. 25 in NF Corp. Herm. vol. 2, pp. 329ff.

68 Orac. Sib. 3.228ff.

69 Herespeaks a Roman provincial.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

163

because of his ignorance, which is a piece of his human condition, a
governor's staff do have some powers beyond their instructions; but he who
presides over the world and governs the universe, he who knows all things,
he from whose divine eyes nothing is hid, has power over all things on his
own, and his angels have no need to do anything but obey. 9That is why they
want no honour for themselves: all their honour is in God. Those who
abandoned God’s service, however, being enemies of the truth and in
collusion againstGod, try to secure divine worship for themselves, together
with thetitleof gods, not because they want any honour- what honour could
they have in their abandoned state? - nor to hurt God, who cannot be hurt,
but to hurt man: it is man they are striving so hard to divert from knowledge
and worship of the true greatness, in case man gains the immortality which
they have lost by their own wickedness.

10 So they pour down darkness and blot out the truth with obscurity to
prevent knowledge of their lord and father, and so as to lure men in easily
they hide in temples, attending every sacrificeand often producing prodigies
to astonish mankind and make them give credit to mere images of divinity
and power. 11 Hence the stone carved in two by an augur with a razor, and
J uno of Veii saying she wanted to move to Rome, and Fortuna M uliebris
declaring her peril, and the ship obedient to Claudia’s pull, and the revenge
for sacrilege on the part of J uno Naked, Proserpina of Locri and Ceres of
M iletus, and of Hercules on A ppi us, of J upiter on Atiniusand of M inerva on
Caesar; hence also the snake summoned from Epidaurusand its liberation of
Rome from plague. 70 12 The prince of demons himself was brought to Rome
in his own likeness, without any attempt to pretend otherwise, if, that is, the
delegation sent for the purpose did bring back with them a snake of wondrous
size.

13 Their greatest deception is done in oracles; irreligious people cannot
tell their tricks from the truth, and so they think that power, victory, wealth
and a happy outcome to all their affairs is granted by the oracles themselves;
they even think that their country has often been saved from threats of
danger by oracular will: after all, oracular response exposed the peril, and
placatory sacrifice averted it. 14 But all that sort of thing is a deception.
Since, having once been his servants, they understand God’s purposes
already, they intervene in a situation so that whatever God has done or is
doing, it appears that they are the agents, and any time some good is due to
a people or a city in accordance with God’s will, they promise that they will

70 See 7.8-19 above.

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bring it about, using prodigies or dreams or oracles, provided that they are
given temples, honours and sacrifices. T he gifts are made; what was goi ng to
happen happens; and great veneration for them is the result. 15 Temples are
dedicated and new statues are consecrated; flocks of victims are put to the
knife; butwhen all thatisdone, the real sacrifice is still thelifeand health of
the people who have done it. 16 Every time danger threatens, the demons
claim they are angry on some stupid and trivial ground, asj uno said she was
with Varro, because he put a pretty boy in J upiter’s cart to carry his relics,
and that was why the name of Rome was nearly wiped out at Cannae. 71 17 But
if J uno was scared of a second Ganymede, why did young Rome pay the
price? Or if gods neglect the infantry in favour of the generals, why did Varro
escape, who was responsible for the disaster, while the undeserving Paul us
got killed? No doubt at the time when a pair of the republic's armies fell to
Hannibal's skill and virtue, the 'decree of unjustj uno’ was not operative in
Rome. 18J uno 'had her arms and her chariot’ atCarthage, but she could not
raise her nerve to protect it or to hurtRome, for' she had heard afuture race
was forming of Trojan blood, which one day would topple that Tyrian
stronghold.’ 72

19 That is, however, the sort of game they play, as they lurk under names
of dead men and set their nets for the living. If the danger that threatens can
be avoided, they want it to appear that placating them diverts it; if not, they
arrangeforitto look asif ithappened because they were despised.Thus they
develop in people who do not know them a sense of their authority and of
thei r power to scare. 20 T his is the artful cunni ng with w hich they have made
knowledge of the one true god something barely remembered among the
nations. Destroyed by their own wickedness they prowl savagely around to
destroy others. 21 That is why, in their hostility towards the human race, they
have even thought up human sacrifice, to swallow up as many souls as they
can.

God permits demons to test man; summary of Book 2

17.1 It will be asked 'Then why does God let these things happen and not
come to the rescue of such awful mistakes?' So that evil may fight with
good, so that vice may be set against virtue, so that he may have some to
punish and some to honour. He has appointed the end of time for his

71 SeeV. Max. 1.1.16.

72 Verg. A. 8.292; 1.16; 1.19-20.

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

165

judgment upon the living and the dead; I shall discuss that judgment in my
final book. 2 He is therefore postponing to the end of time the effusion of his
wrath in heavenly power and might; we shall 'recall presages, dread
forewarnings of the prophets of old, with horror.’ 73

3 For the time being he suffers men to stray and to fail in duty even to
himself while he remains just, gentle and patient. In him is perfect virtue:
perfect patience is necessarily in him also. 4 Hence the view of some people
that God does not even get angry, because he is not subject to emotions,
which are disturbances of the mind: all creatures liable to emotional affect
are frail. That belief destroys truth and religion utterly. 5 Let us set aside for
the moment, however, this topic of the wrath of God, because the material
for it is quite large and needs to be treated more broadly in its own right. 74
Anyone, then, who venerates those wickedest of spirits and follows them
will gain neither heaven nor light, which are God’s: instead that man will go
down into what we argued was granted in the distribution of things to the
prince of evil himself: into darkness, that is, into the underworld and into
torment eternal.

6 I have explained that worship of gods is triply vain. First, the images
which are worshipped are effigies of men long dead, and it is perverse and
topsy-turvy for the image of a man to be worshipped by the image of God,
since he is worshipping what is worse and weaker; 7 it is further an unfor¬
givable crime to abandon the living God in order to serve memorials of the
dead, who cannot bestow on anyone the life and light they lack themselves;
and there is no other god at all except the one God to whose arbitrament and
power every soul is subject.

8 Second, the holy images themselves which people serve in their
stupidity lack all sense of it, because they areof earth. 9 Anyone can see that
it is wrong for an upright creature to bend down to adore the earth. That is
why the earth has been set beneath our feet, to be trampled on, not
worshipped; we were raised out of it and given our lofty stature, in contrast
with all other living creatures, precisely in order not to collapse back down
and prostrate our heavenly features to the ground, but to direct our eyes
where they are directed by their own natural condition, and there is nothing
else for our adoration and worship except the single name of our sole maker
and parent, who has made man straight and tall so that we may know that we
are called to things on high in heaven.

73 Verg. A 4.464-5.

74 L. would deal with this in his work de ira.

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10 Third, the spirits which preside over the actual ceremonies have been
condemned and discarded by God to wallow on the earth; not only can they
do no good to their worshippers because power over all things is in the
control of the one, but they even destroy them with deadly temptations and
distractions: it is their daily task to cloak man in darkness in case he should
seek the true god. 11 They are therefore not to be worshipped because they
are subject to the verdict of god. It is a very great sin to submit yourself to
their power when you could if you followed justice surpass them; by using
God’s name against them you could drive them out and put them to flight.

12 If it is clear that cults of that sort are empty in all the ways I have
pointed out, then it is clear that people who supplicate the dead or venerate
the earth or shackle their souls to unclean spirits are not sustaining human
reason, and people who in rebellion against God the father of the human race
adopt unforgivable rituals and violate all that is right and proper will pay the
penalty for their crime of impiety.

Religion raises man's gaze to the heavens

laiAny man therefore who strives to protect the mystery of man and to
possess the reason for human nature must raise himself from the ground and
direct his gaze to the heavens with mind erect. He must not look for god
beneath his feet nor wrest something to worship from his own footprints:
anything below a man must be beneath him. Instead he must look aloft and
search on high: nothing can be greater than man except what is above him.
God isgreaterthan man: God is therefore above him, not below him, and he
must not be sought i n the lowest parts, but i n the highest. 2 T hat is why there
can be no religion anywherethereisan image: that is indubitable. If worship
issues from things divine, and if there is nothing divine except in things
celestial, then images have nothing to worship in them because nothing
celestial can exist in something made of earth. A wise man could see that
from the very vocabulary. 3 A nything copied must be false; nothing can ever
be called true which fakes the truth by dye and imitation. If all imitation is
absolutely not serious, but a sort of comic game, then there is no religion in
images but only a pantomime of it. 4 The truth must therefore take prefer¬
ence over all falsehoods, and things earthly must be trampled under so that
we achieve thethings celestial. 5The situation issuch that anyone who bows
his soul, a thing of heavenly origin, to the depths below falls where he casts
himself; he should therefore remember his reason and his stature, and direct
all his efforts and energy towards the things above. 6 Hewho doesthatwill

BOOK 2: THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

167

plainly be judged a wise man, a just man, a human; above all, a man worthy
of heaven, and his father will know him as he made him, not lowly and
stooped to the ground I ike a four-footed beast, but standing tall and straight.

Preview of Book 3

mi think I have now completed a large and difficult portion of the work I
have undertaken, and with the support of heaven for my powers of
expression I have dispelled mistakes of long standing. 2 Now, however, a
greater and more difficult struggle is before me as I wrestle with the philo¬
sophers, whose great learning and eloquence loom like a mountain in my
path. 3 Previously I was beset by mass, by the near unanimity of popular
opinion; now I am beset by men of authority, whose reputation is
outstanding in every way. 4 Everyone knows that there is more weight in a
handful of scholars than in hosts of the ignorant. 5 But we must not despair.
With God and truth to guide us they too can be shifted from their views; I
think they will not be so obstinate as to deny they see the sun in its full
brightness when their eyes are healthily opened. 6 J ust let their usual claim
hold good, that their controlling passion is the search for truth, and I will
surely bring them to believe that the truth they seek wasdiscovered long ago,
and to admit that it could not have been discovered by human wit alone.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

Truth, rhetoric and philosophy

LI Because truth, 0 emperor Constantine, is still thought to lurk in ob¬
scurity, whether from the ignorance and inexperience of ordinary men who
are slaves to a variety of silly superstitions, or from the attempts of philo¬
sophers in their intellectual wickedness to muddy things rather than clarify
them, I wish i had a faculty of eloquence which, if not the same as Cicero's
- that was something quite specially remarkable - was at least close to it;
then truth could lean on my powers of intelligence as much as it does on its
own strength, and one day it could rise up and shake off confusions, whether
general or peculiar to those thought wise, dispelling them all, and it could
bring its light of great brightness upon all mankind. 2 I have two reasons for
my wish: one is that si nee a dressing of rhetoric and some seductive vocabu¬
lary make ordinary people such ready victims of falsehood, the embellish¬
ment of truth would makethem all the more ableto believein it; secondly, in
vanquishing the philosophers themselves, we ought to make prime use of
their own weapons, in which they typically have such a contented con¬
fidence. 3 But it is as it is by God's will; truth is to be the more glorious by
being plain and unadorned, for it is well enough equipped as it is, and addi¬
tion of extraneous ornament only masks and corrupts it, whereas a lie would
only please by looking other than it is, for lies are self-corrupting and they
break up and vanish unless painted and polished with adornments sought
from elsewhere. Hence i bear with equanimity the fact that I have been
granted an average talent.

4 This task that I have taken on, too great perhaps for my own strength to
sustain, I have undertaken out of no confidence in rhetoric: my confidence
lies in the truth of it. Even if I am inadequate to it, any deficiencies will, with
God's help whose task it is, be fully made up by truth. 5 A li the greatest
speakers, as I well know, have often lost to average pleaders: the power of
truth, even when things are difficult, is strong enough to see to its own
defence by its own light; why should I think that it will be overwhelmed
now, in a cause as great as this, by men who for all their ability and elo¬
quence are nevertheless telling lies? 6Why should itnotshineout bright and

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

169

gloriousin its own light whatever the shortcomings of my rhetoric, which is
a thi n stream from a siender source at best? T here have been phi losophers of
remarkable literary learning, but I would not yield place to them for know¬
ledge and understanding of truth: no one can achieve truth simply by think¬
ing and arguing. 7 I cast no slur on their desire to know the truth, since man’s
great greed to acquire it is the doing of God; what I object to, after all that
fine and excellent intention of theirs, is the utter lack of product due to their
complete ignorance of what truth is, and of how, where, and in whatframeof
mind to seek it. 8 In the midst of their desire to rescue people from delusion
they thus plunge into the greatest of traps and confusion themselves.

It is the sequence itself of the material under consideration which has
brought me to this task of refuting philosophy. 9 Since all error arises either
from wrong worship or from wrong understanding, in order to prove error
wrong both must be undone. 10 Though we have the tradition of holy
scripture that the thinking of philosophers is futile, it is fact and proof that
we must use to divert people from a preference for belief in things human
rather than in things divine, whether they are persuaded by the fair name of
philosophy or tricked by the glitter of empty rhetoric.

11 The scriptural tradition is short and stark: 1 when God was addressing
man, addition of argument to his words, as if he would not otherwise be
believed, was not appropriate; he spoke as the supreme judge of all creation
ought to speak, his business being not discussion but declaration. 12 He is,
being God, the truth himself; since the evidence of his divine utterance is
available to us for every single thing, we shall certainly show how much
more secure the arguments are that can defend the truth, since even false¬
hood can be defended till it often looks like truth.

13 There is thus no reason for us to hold philosophers in such esteem that
we grow scared of their eloquence. 14 They have the educated man’s capa¬
city to speak well, but no capacity at all to speak truth, because they never
learnt it from him who is lord of it. 15 We shall not, of course, be doing
anything notable in convicting them of ignorance: they often admitto ignor¬
ance themselves. 16 Since they lack credibility in the one thing in which
alone they ought to be credible, I shall endeavour to show that they never
spoke a truer word than in delivering the verdict on their own ignorance.

1 L. is sensitive to the charge, commonly levelled, that the scriptures lack literary merit. See
5.1.10-21, and 5.3.1-3.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Pursuit of wisdom is not wisdom

21 In the first two books the falseness of cults was demonstrated, together
with analysis of the origin of the whole mistake. The task of this book is to
demonstrate the emptiness and error of philosophy as well, so that ail mis¬
takes may be removed and the revelation of truth may shine forth. 2 Let us
start thereto re with theword philosophy in its usual sense; if wecan destroy
its head, we shall have an easier path to destruction of its whole body, if
indeed body is the right word when all its parts and limbs are in conflict,
with nothing binding them coherently together; they seem in their discon¬
nection to be twitching rather than living.

3 Philosophy is, as its name shows and as its practitioners define it, the
pursuit of wisdom. I can make no better proof that philosophy is not wisdom
than from the meaning of the word itself. Anyone in pursuit of wisdom is
obviously not wise yet; he studies to become capable of wisdom. 4 I n other
skills it is clear what study does and what its aim is; when people arrive at
mastery through learning, they are not cal led students of the craft any longer,
but craftsmen. 5 Philosophers have called themselves students of wisdom
rather than wise out of modesty, it may be said. 6 Pythagoras, inventor of the
word, disproves that; his predecessors had thought of themselves as wise,
but he was a little bit wiser, for he realised that wisdom could not be attained
through any human pursuit of it, and therefore it was wrong to apply so
absolute a word to something beyond our grasp and achievement. Hence his
answer when people asked him what he cl aimed to be, and he said 'A philo¬
sopher'; a seeker after wisdom, that is. 7 If then philosophy is a search for
wisdom, it is not wisdom itself, because seeker and sought are necessarily
distinct, nor is the search itself sound, because it is incapable of finding
anything. I would not myself allow that even those in pursuit of wisdom are
philosophers, because their pursuit does not bring them to wisdom. 8 If the
chance of discovering truth were obedient to the desire for it, and if the
desire were a sort of pathway to truth, then truth would have been found at
some poi nt. Yet it has not happened, for al I the ti me and talent spent i n search
of it; plainly, there is no wisdom in philosophy. 9 Those who philosophize,
therefore, are not in pursuit of wisdom, although they think they are, because
they do not know the nature or the whereabouts of what they seek. 10 Whether
they are, therefore, or are not in pursuit of wisdom, they are not wise,
because what is not being correctly sought or is not being sought at all can
never befound. Nevertheless, let us see whether anything or nothing can be
discovered by this process of search.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

171

Divine knowledge, human opinion

HThere seem to be two elements in philosophy, knowledge and opinion,
and no others. 2 Knowledge cannot come from one’s ability nor can it be
grasped by thought, because to haveany particular knowledge in oneself isa
property of God, not of man, 3 and mortal nature only takes in knowledge
which comes from outside. Eyes, ears and the other senses have been opened
up in the body by divine ski 11 deliberately so that knowledge could percolate
into the mind by those channels. 4 To investigate the causes of natural
phenomena - to want to know whether the sun is as big as it looks or many
times bigger than this whole earth of ours, whether the moon is spherical or
concave, whether the stars stick to the sky or travel freely through the
atmosphere, what size the sky is and what it is made of, whether it is still and
motionless or spins at very high speed, how thick the earth is or what
foundations it is poised and hung upon - 5 to want, I repeat, to understand all
that by arguing and guessing is surely best compared with wanting to discuss
what we think a city of some far distant folk is like which we have never seen
and whose name is the only thing we know of it. 6 If we laid claim to know¬
ledge of something which cannot be known, we would surely seem mad for
daring to assert what we could be proved wrong about. So when there are
people who think they know things about nature which cannot be humanly
known, how much madder and more demented they must be! 7 Socrates and
the Academics who followed him were quite right to reject as knowledge
what belongs to intuition, not to debate.

8 The conclusion is that only opinion constitutes philosophy: where
knowledge fails opinion takes over, and what you don't know you suppose.
People discussing natural phenomena suppose that the phenomena
correspond to their opinions about them. So they do not know the truth about
them, because knowing entails certainty and opinion uncertainty. 9 Let us
return to the instance mentioned above: let's play 'Let's suppose' about the
state and style of a city of which we know nothing at all but its name. Very
probably it is on level ground, with stone walls, lofty buildings, numerous
streets and wonderfully decorated temples. 10 Now let's write down the
lifestyleand behaviour of itscitizens. But as soon as wedo all that, someone
else will maintain a different version, and when he's finished, a third party
will get up, and others after him, and they will suppose things very different
from what we supposed. 11 So which version out of them all will be nearer
the truth? Possibly none. Oh, but everything contingent to the nature of
things has been said, so one version must be true! 12 Ah, but there won't be

172

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

any knowing whose version that is. It is possible that they were all wrong at
some point in their description, and that they all got it right at some point.
We would be stupid, then, if we made discussion our method of search:
someone could turn up to scoff at our opinions and take us for fools in
wanting to have opinions about the nature of something we know nothing of.

13 There is no need to go after distant objects, where probably no one
will emerge to put us down. 14 Let’s play 'Let’s suppose' about what’s
happening at this moment in the market or town hall. But that’s remote stuff
too. So let’s say what’s going on through the wall next door. But no one can
know thatwithout hearing itand seeing it. That's why no oneventuresto say
it, because he will be proved wrong on the spot, not verbally but by instant
evidence. 15 And yet that is what the philosophers do, discussing what’s
going on in the sky; they think they get away with it because there is no one
around to expose their mistakes, 16 whereas if they thought someone would
come down to show how mad and mendacious they are, they would never
discuss any item at all on the list of impossible knowledge! Not that they get
away with their cheek and presumption by not being put down: don't think
it! God puts them down, who alone knows the truth, even though he may
seem to wink at them; he takes the wisdom of men for the height of folly.

Ignorance of philosophers

4.1Zeno and the Stoics were thus right to reject supposition. To suppose you
know what you don't is not the mark of a wise man but rather of a reckless
fool. 2 If, then, nothing can be known, as Socrates held, and nothing should
be supposed, as Zeno held, philosophy disappears in toto, overthrown not
only by these two, who were princes of philosophy, but by everybody; by
now it looks as though it fell victim to its own weapons long ago.

3 Philosophy has split into a multiplicity of sects, and they all think
differently. Which one do we go to for truth? It can't be in them all, for sure.
4 Let’s pick a particular one: wisdom will then obviously fail to exist in all
the others. Let’s work through them one by one: again, whatever we grant to
one we shall deny to the rest. Any one sect dismisses all others in order to
confirm itself and its own ideas, and it admits wisdom in no other sect in
case it concedes error of its own; but its process of dismissing other sects is
the same process by which they dismiss it, 5 for those who condemn a sect
for its folly are philosophers none the less: praise any one sect and call it
true, and philosophers condemn it as false. 6 Shall we put our faith in a
single sect, then, which extols itself and its teaching, or in lots of them, all

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busy attacking each other's ignorance? The views of a majority must be
sounder than a lone voice, 7 for no one can form a sound view of himself, as
that great poet attests [Ter. FI au. 503]:

FI ow human nature is so featly made,
that others' ways are better seen and judged
than one’s own!

8 Since then everything is uncertain, either all must be believed, or no
one. If no one, then wise men don't exist because each one thinks he alone is
wise; if all, then wise men still don't exist because each one is denied his
wisdom by all the rest. 9This way they all perish together: liketheSparti of
the poets, they kill each other in turn till none survive at all, and that happens
because they have swords but no shields. 10 If then individual sects are
found guilty of folly on the verdict of the many, then they all turn out to be
vain and futile. Thus philosophy works its own end and destruction itself.

11 This was the understanding of Arcesilaus, founder of the Academy; 2
he combined everybody's attacks on everybody else together with confession
of ignorance on the part of some notable philosophers, and armed himself
against everyone, constructing a novel philosophy of non-philosophizing.

12 FI is initiative brought two sorts of philosophy into existence, one being
the original one, asserting its claim to knowledge, and the other the new one,
fighting the claim down. In these two I see the division of a truly civil war:

13 wisdom cannot be divided; so on which side shall wepostit? If the nature
of things can be known, our squad of novices will perish; if it cannot, then
the veterans will die; if the fight is a draw, philosophy the commander in
chief will still perish because it is torn in two: nothing can be in contra¬
diction of itself without perishing. 14 If the weakness of the human
condition precludes the existence in man of any special knowledge from
within at all, as i have explained, then victory goes to Arcesilaus’ troop.
Even he will not stand his ground, however, since it is not possible for
absolutely nothing to be known.

The new academy self-destructs

SI There are indeed plenty of things we are compelled to know either
naturally or experientially or from the pressure to survive. If you don't know

2 Arcesilaus (c. 315-240 BC), founded the new Academy, turning the school that Plato had
founded in a sceptical direction. Cf. 5.3ff. and 6.7ff. below.

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how to find what is useful for survival or how to avoid and shun what is
dangerous, you perish necessarily. 2 There are plenty of things besides
which are the fruits of experience. The varying courses of sun and moon, and
the transit of the planets and the system of seasons have been grasped;
doctors have learnt about the nature of bodies and the power of herbs, and
farmers have learnt about types of soil and indicators of rain and storms
brewing. There is no skill notfounded in knowledge. 3 If Arcesilaushad had
any sense, he should have sorted out what could be known from what
couldn't; but if he had done that, he would have reduced himself to the level
of ordinary men, 4 who are sometimes the wiser for knowing only as much
as they need to know. Ask one of them whether he knows something or
nothing, and he’ll tell you he knows what he knows and he'll admit he
doesn't know what he doesn’t know. 5 Arcesilaus was right to dismiss other
people's teaching but wrong in the basing of hisown.Total ignorancecannot
be wisdom: wisdom’s business is knowing. W hen he routed the philosophers
and demonstrated they knew nothing, he also lost his own claim to be a
philosopher, because his teaching was that nothing was known. 6 Anyone
attacking others for ignorance needs to be knowledgeable himself, but when
he isn't, it is an odd piece of perversity to set himself up as a philosopher on
the grounds that he can dismiss the rest! They could reply, 7 'If you prove
that we know nothing and are not wise because we know nothing, then you
aren't wise either because you acknowledge that you know nothing too.’
8 Arcesilaus’ achievement is to finish off all the philosophers and to perish
on the same sword himself!

H uman knowledge is tempered by ignorance: the case of natural
philosophy

dlDoes wisdom exist nowhere then? Oh no! It was there in their midst all
thetime, but nobody saw it. Some thought everything could be known: plainly
they were not wise; some thought nothing could be known: they were not
wise either, attributing too littleto man just as the others attributed too much.
Each party overstated its case.

2 So where is wisdom? In not thinking you know everything, which is
God’s portion, and in not thinking you know nothing, which is an animal’s
portion. For in man’s portion there is something in between, which is know¬
ledge combined with and tempered by ignorance. 3 What we know comes
from the soul, which comes from heaven, and our ignorance comes from the
body, which comes from the earth: we thus have something in common both

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with God and with the animals. 4 Since we are composed of these two
elements, the one endowed with light and the other with darkness, we have
some share of knowledge and some share of ignorance. This is our bridge; it
is possible to cross it without risk of falling because all who lean to one side
or the other tumble off, either to rightorto left. I will explain how each party
has gone astray.

5 Academics in dispute with natural philosophers, in order to show that
there was no knowledge, used items of some obscurity; they were content
with instances of a few very difficult items, and they plumped for ignorance
as if they had abolished all knowledge by abolishing it in part. 6The natural
philosophers developed the contrasting case, that everything could be known
from material that was transparent, and they maintained the possibility of
knowledge content with these obvious examples, as if by defending know¬
ledge in part they had defended it all. The one lot failed to see what was
obvious and the others failed to see what was difficult; in the middle of their
fisticuffs to retain or reject knowledge as a whole, they failed to see the
doorway in between which would let them through to wisdom.

7 in criticising Zeno the leader of the Stoics in order to overthrow philo¬
sophy in its entirety, A rcesiIaus, the champion of ignorance, took the view,
following Socrates, that knowledge should be declared wholly impossible.
8 He therefore argued against the thinking of those philosophers who would
have attributed the unearthing and discovery of truth to their own talents.
Now, since such wisdom was plainly mortal and had reached its peak of
growth a few generations after its start, for it to grow old and die as by now
it had to, up comes the Academy all of a sudden to be philosophy's old age
and to finish it off as its bloomtime passed, 9 and A rcesi I aus was right to see
that people who thought knowledge of truth could be grasped by guessing
were claiming too much, or rather, were being stupid.

10 Things said in error, however, cannot be rebutted except by someone
who knows the truth already. A rcesi I aus was trying to act without knowing
thetruth; hence his introduction of the 'asystatic' system of philosophy (asy-
static we may render as inconsistent or unsystematic). 3 11 For nothing to be
knowable, something has to be known; if you knew absolutely nothing at all,
the fact that nothing can be known would itself be removed. 12 Anyone who
declares ex cathedra, as it were, that nothing is known makes his declaration
as something itself known and understood: therefore something can be

3 The word asystatus is not otherwise known; the sense unsystematic appears to fit A rcesi-
Iaus' philosophy quite well. In creating a Latin loan-word from Greek L. is following
Ciceronian practice.

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known. 13 Something similar to the following is often put forward in the
schools as an example of asystaticism; it is the case of the man who dreamt
he was not to trust in dreams. If he trusts his dream, then it will follow that it
is not to be trusted, whereas if he does not trust it, it will follow that it is to
be trusted. 14 So too, if nothing can be known, the fact that nothing can be
known has to be known itself, but if it is known that nothing can be known,
then it is an error to say that nothing can be known. Thus we have a doctrine
at odds with itself and self-destructive. 15 It is a crafty fellow who wants to
deny knowledge to all other philosophers in order to hide it at home for
himself - anyone affirming something in order to deny know I edge to the rest
is obviously not denying it to himself - but it doesn't work: people observe
his legerdemain. 16 He would be acting more wisely and more truly if he
made an exception and said that the causes and reasons at least for celestial
and natural phenomena could not be known because they were concealed
(no one explains them), and should not be investigated because investigation
could not reveal them. 17 With that exception he would have warned the
natural philosophers not to investigate things beyond the bounds of human
thought, and he would also have freed himself from jealous criticism and
would certainly have given us something to follow. 18 As it is, in preventing
us from following othersin caseweshould wantto know more than wecan,
he stopped us from following him too. 19 W ho would want to toil away to
know nothing? Who would adopt a theory of a sort that would even undo
standard knowledge? If such a theory exists, it must be composed of know¬
ledge; if not, it would be very silly to think something worth learning where
there is no advance towards learning, and possibly even a retreat from it.
20 And that is why if it is impossible to know everything, as the natural
philosophers think, and equally if it is impossible to know anything, as the
Academics think, philosophy is utterly wiped out.

Moral philosophers disagree

7.1Now let us pass to the other area of philosophy, which philosophers call
moral. The justification for the whole of philosophy lies in moral philosophy,
since natural philosophy ismerely of interestwhilemoral philosophy isalso
useful. 2 Si nee mi stakes made in sorting out one's life and in developing one's
moral ity are comparatively dangerous, a greater care must be taken to know
how we should live. 3 In natural philosophy allowances can be made: if
peopletalk sense, they do no good, and if they talk rubbish they do no harm;
in moral philosophy, however, there is no room for division of opinion and

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no room for error. All should think the same, and the philosophy should be
presented as from one mouth, si nee any error means the wrecking of all life.
4 In that first area of philosophy, its lack of danger was balanced by its
greater difficulty: problems of analysis led to diversity and difference of
opinion; here, the extra danger is balance by reduced difficulty, because daily
experience and practice show us what is better and sounder. 5 So let us see
whether people do agree, or else what they offer for the improvement of our
lives. 6 There is no need for a full survey; let us pick out one item, and best
of all, the one which is most important, the hinge on which all wisdom turns.

7 4 Epicurus considers that our greatest good lies in mental pleasure;
Aristippus thinks it is in physical pleasure; Callipho and Dinomachus com¬
bine pleasure with good repute. Diodorus locates it in removal of pain,
Hieronymus in absence of pain, and the Peripatetics in the joint good of
mind, body and fortune. 8 Herillus' supreme good is knowledge, Zeno’s is to
live in accord with nature, and for certain Stoics it is to follow virtue.
Aristotle locates it in good repute and virtue combined. Those are virtually
all the views of everybody. 5

9 W ho is to be followed in such diversity? Who is to be believed? They
all have an equal authority. If we can select something which is better, then
we don't need philosophy: we are wise already, because we are in judgment
of wise men’s ideas. 10 But since our purpose is to learn wisdom, how can
we judge when we have not yet begun to be wise, especially with the great
Academic 6 beside us to tug at our cloaks and prevent us believing anyone,
while offering nothing for us to follow himself?

Supreme good: erroneous theories

&lit only remains to leave the litigants to their lunatic quarrels and to turn
to a judge. 7 He will of course be a judge offering a straightforward and

4 For 7-8, cf. Cic. Ac. 2.129,131; Tusc. 5.84ff.; for Epicurus, seeU sener p. 294,14, ad fr. 452.

5 For similar catalogues, see Cic. Fin. 5.73; Ac. 2.139. Aristippus founded the Cyrenaic
school, which flourished in the late 4th and early 3rd centuries. Callipho and Dinomachus are
hardly known of otherwise. Diodorus (Cronus; died c. 284 BC) was leader of the Dialectical
school, which specialised in logic. Hieronymus of Rhodes lived in Athens c. 290-230 BC; he
abandoned the Peripatetics to found an eclectic school. Herillus of Carthage was a pupil of
Zeno of Citium, but his brand of Stoicism deviated from mainline Stoicism, which continued
under Chrysippus.

6 L. means Socrates.

7 L, whose teaching encompassed forensic rhetoric, slips easily into the language of legal
process.

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peaceable wisdom which will have power not only to shape us and bring us
on course but also to give a verdsict on the differences of those philosophers.
2 This is the wisdom which shows us what man’s true and supreme good is.
Before I start to discuss it, however, all those other ideas must be rebutted, so
that it is quite clear that none of those philosophers ever was wise.

3 We are discussing the duty of man: the supreme good of the supreme
animal ought to consist in something quite distinct from that of the other
animals. 4 Wild beasts have fangs, cattle have horns, birds have wings as
their specific instrument: so man must have something allotted him without
which he would lose any sense of his own condition. What all animals have
for their survival or procreation is a natural good, but not a supreme good
unless it is specific to each individual species. 5 The philosopher who
thought that pleasure of mind was the supreme good was not wise because
whether pleasure of mind is a relief or a joy, it is shared by all. 6 Aristippus
I don't think worth an answer; someone for ever resorting to physical
pleasures, in thrall to belly and sex, cannot be thought of as a man at all.
Except for the fact that he talked, he lived a life indistinguishable from that
of an animal. 7 If donkeys, pigs or dogs had a power of speech and were
asked what they want when they pursue females so fiercely that they can
scarcely be pulled apart and they forget about food and drink, why they
either drive off other males with violence or don't keep away even when
beaten but persist in their pursuit despite frequent drubbings from their
betters, why they don't fear rain and frost, why they accept the burden and
don't reject the danger, they will respond by saying simply that physical
pleasure is the supreme good, and they go for it in order to have sensations of
supreme delight, and those sensations are so precious that they think no
hardship or damage or even death worth evading in pursuit of them. 8 Will
these be the people to go to for advice on life when they think the same as
animals 8 bereft of reason?

9 Cyrenaics give the glory to virtue on the grounds that virtue is effective
of pleasure. 9 'True,' says the scratching dog, or your filthy pig; 'that’s why I
fight with my rival with all the strength I've got, so that my virtue brings me
pleasure; if I go away the loser I’m bound to have no pleasure.' 10 So are
those the people to be our source of wisdom, when they are distinct from
animals in speech only, and not in thought? The view that the supreme good
is the removal of pain belongs obviously not to the Peripatetics or Stoics but

8 Brandt’s proposal to read animantes for animae is accepted.

9 The characteristic doctrine of the Cyrenaic school founded by Aristippus was hedonism.

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to the 'Clinic' philosophers. 10 11 It is a position maintained by people who
are ill or in some pain, as is clear, but it is ludicrous to have as your supreme
good something a doctor can offer. For the enjoyment of good, pain is neces¬
sary, and frequent pain and great pain at that, so as to increase the pleasure
when the pain leaves off. 12 Someone who has never felt pain is in a very
sorry case, because he is missing a good; we used to think such a man very
happy because he did miss out on evil. 13 Anyone saying that the supreme
good is to have absolutely no pain is rather close to that sort of silliness.
Quite apart from every animal being shy of pain, who can make a good for
himself out of something whose occurrence we can only hope for? 14 A
supreme good cannot bring anyone to bliss unless it was always within his
reach, and that does not come to man by any virtue or learning or labour of
his own: nature herself makes it available to every living creature.

15 As for those who linked pleasure with honesty, despite their wish to
avoid such a combination they have achieved a contradictory good: anyone
devoted to pleasure is bound to miss out on honesty, and anyone keen on
honesty is bound to miss out on pleasure. 16 The Peripatetics' good is over¬
complex; apart from the goods of the mind (and there is quarrel enough what
they are), their good seems one shared with animals. 17 Physical goods such
asfreedomfrom injury, pain and illness are no less necessary to dumb beasts
than to man, and perhaps more so, since a man can be restored by treatment
and care but they cannot. 18 So too with the goods of luck, as they are called:
animals need prey and pasture to keep life going just as man needs his
resources. 19 By proposing as a good something not within human grasp
they put all mankind under an alien control.

20 Let’s hear what Zeno says. Even he can dream his way to virtue from
time to time. 'The supreme good,’ he says, 'is to live in accord with nature.'
In that case we must live in the manner of wild beasts, 21 since in them are
found all thethings which oughtto befarfrom man: they seek pleasure, they
suffer fear, they trick, they lurk, they kill, and (most relevant) they do not
know God. 22 So why does Zeno recommend I live according to nature
when she herself is prone to the slippery slope and topples into vice at the
prompting of a few temptations? 23 If he is saying that the nature of beasts
is one thing and the nature of man another because man is born to virtue,
that’s something; but even so it won't be a definition of supreme good
because there is no animal that doesn’t live according to its nature.

10 Cf. Cypr. Ep. 69.16.2 (with 13.1-2), wherePeripatetici ('theWalkers') and Clinici ('the
Bedridden') are jokingly juxtaposed. L. might be aiming his barbs at the Epicureans, or at some
other philosophical group or groups.

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24 The philosopher who made knowledge the supreme good did offer
something which is peculiar to man, but people seek know I edge for the sake
of something else and not for itself. 25 No one is content to know without
getting some profit from his knowledge. Ski I Is are learnt to be practised, and
they are practised either to sustain life, or for pleasure, or for glory. Know¬
ledge is not therefore the supreme good because it is not sought for itself.
26 So what is the difference between thinking the supreme good is know¬
ledge and thinking it is what knowledge produces, food, glory and pleasure?
But those things are not peculiar to man and therefore are not supreme
goods: an appetite for pleasure and food occurs not only in man but also in
beasts. 27 As for the desire for glory, that can befound in horses, who rejoice
as winners and grieve as losers. 'So keen they are for the laurels, and victory
means so much.' The supreme poet rightly says there needs to be a test for
'what anguish each onefeelswhen beaten, and what pride in victory’s palm.' 11
If other animals share in the products of knowledge, then knowledge is not
the supreme good. 28 There is in any case a considerable fault in this
definition: 'knowledge' is used too starkly. People who have any skill at all
will start to havea claim on bliss, including those with evil skills; an expert
at poison will seem as entitled as a healer. 29 The question is what the
knowledge is to be related to. If it is related to the causes of natural pheno¬
mena, what bliss am I being offered if I know the source of the Nile or some
mad theory about the sky? There is no knowledge of such stuff, only
opinion, which varies with ability.

30 The remaining theory is that the supreme good is the knowledge of
good and evil. So why did our philosopher prefer to say the supreme good
was knowing rather than plain wisdom? The effective meaning of each word
is the same. So far, however, no one has said that the supreme good was
wisdom because better can be said. 31 Knowledge is inadequate for the
adoption of good and the avoidance of evil unless it is accompanied by
virtue. Though many philosophers debated good and evil, under the com¬
pulsion of nature they lived their lives differently from what they said
because they lacked virtue. Virtue is wisdom if combined with knowledge.

32 It remains to rebut the people who think that virtue itself is the
supreme good, one of whom was actually Cicero; they have been very
injudicious. Virtue is not itself the supreme good but it is the effector and
mother of it, because without virtue the supreme good cannot be attained.
Each point is easy to understand. 33 Do they think, I ask, that such a glorious

11 Verg. G. 3.112 and 102.

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181

good can be reached easily, or only with toil and trouble? They must sharpen
their wits and defend their mistake. 34 If its attainment is easy and free from
toil, then it is not the supreme good. Why should we torture ourselves to
death, struggling night and day, when what we seek is so readily available
that anyone could grasp it without any effort of mind? 35 But if there is no
good we achieve without effort, even a common or garden good, it being the
nature of good to go steeply up while evil goes steeply down, so the supreme
good is bound to be attained only with supreme effort. If that is very true,
then a second virtue is needed in order to reach the virtue which is said to be
the supreme good, and it is utterly absurd that all virtue’s efforts should only
arrive at itself. 36 If there is no attainment of any good without effort, plainly
vi rtue is the means of attai nment, si nee the effective busi ness of vi rtue I ies i n
taking on hard work and carrying it through. The supreme good therefore
cannot be the means necessary for arriving at something else. 37 As they did
not know what virtue could do and where it aimed but they failed to find
anything better, they stuck to the word virtue itself, saying that it should be
the aim but without declaring its reward; in consequence they set up as their
good something which lacked a good.

38 A ristotle was not far from this position: he thought the supreme good
was virtue with good repute - as if a disreputable virtue could even exist! It
would simply cease to be a virtue if it had any taint of vice. 39 But he did see
the possibility of virtue being misjudged out of perversity; hence his view
that public opinion should be heeded. But anyone doing that will go way off
what is right and good, because it is not within our power to give virtue the
repute that matches its deserts. That sort of honour is simply a distinction
conferred on someone over time in accord with popular approval. 40 What
will happen if human error or perversity causes a mistaken opinion to
develop? Shall we abandon virtue just because ignorant people think it
wicked and vicious? 41 Virtue can be sorely subjected to envy: in order for
it to be a particular and perpetual good it must have no need of extraneous
help; it must depend upon its own strength and stand firm by itself. 42 it
must not look for any good from man, nor decline any evil.

Recognition of God leads to the supreme good

9.11 come now to the supreme good of true wisdom. Its nature must be
determined as follows: first, it must belong to man alone and not be available
to any other animal; second, it must belong to spirit alone and not permit the
body to partake of it; finally, no one must be able to attain it without

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knowledge and virtue. 2 That limitation shuts out and undoes all philo¬
sophers’ opinions: nothing that they said is anything like it.

31 will now say what it is, in order to show, as I intended, that all philo¬
sophers have been blind and ignorant; at no time could they see or under¬
stand or even suspect what was set up as man’s supreme good. 4 When
A naxagoras was asked why he had been born, he said it was to see the sky
and the sun. This has won universal admiration, as an answer worthy of a
philosopher. 5 I think, however, that he couldn't work out what to say, and
rather than say nothing answered at random. Had he been wise he should
have pondered itprivately and meditated upon it; anyonewho doesnotknow
the reason for his own existence is no man. Let us assume the remark was not
uttered casually, however. 6 Let us see what a massive mistake he has made
in only three words: first, he located all man’s business in the eyes alone,
referring everything to the body and nothing to the mind. 7 Suppose him
blind: will he lose his function as a man? That cannot happen without the
failure of the soul. What about the other parts of the body? 8 Will they each
lose their functions? W hat about the superior i mportance of the ears over the
eyes? Learning and wisdom can begot by the ears alone but not by the eyes
alone. 9 You were born to see the sky and the sun, were you? W ho brought
you to the spectacle? What does your gaze contribute to the sky and the
realm of nature? Surely you are meant to praise this vast and wonderful work!
10 Admit the existence of God, then, the creator of all things, who brought
you into this world to witness his colossal work and to praise it. 11 You think
it’s great to see the sky and sun, do you? W hy not give thanks to him who is
the creator of this great kindness? You admire his works? W hy not take mental
measure of God’s virtue, foresight and power? Anyone who has brought
such wonders into being is bound to be much more wonderful himself.

12 Suppose you had been invited to dine and had been very well
entertained, would people think you sane if you treated the pleasure as more
important than its creator? That is the extent to which philosophers refer
everything to the body and nothing at all to the mind, seeing no more than
what’s within sight. 13 And yet, when all the functions of the body are set
aside, the purpose of man must be seen in his mind alone. We are not then
born in order to see what has been made, but to gaze upon the maker of all
things himself: to see him in the mind, that is. 14 If then a man of true
wisdom were asked why he was born, he will reply fearlessly and promptly
that he was born to worship God who created us to serve him. 15 The service
of God is simply to guard and preserve justice by good actions. Anaxagoras,
being a novice in things divine, reduced something of great importance to a

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minimum by picking two things only which he said he was to contemplate.
16 If he had said he was born to gaze on the world, though he would be
taking in everything and speaking more comprehensively, he would still not
have fully described man's business because world is less important than
God to the same extent that body is less than soul, because the world was
made and is guided by God. 17 The world is thus not for ocular contem¬
plation, both world and eyes being corporeal, but God is for contemplation
by the soul because God, in accordance with his own immortality, has
deliberately made soul eternal. Contemplation of God is veneration and
worship of the common parent of the human species. 18 If that has escaped
philosophers, and they have cast themselves to the ground in ignorance of
the divine, Anaxagoras must be considered to have seen neither sky nor sun,
for all his claim to have been born to that end! 19 The purpose of man’s
existence is thus made plain, if he were wise; humanity is man’s special
thing. But what is humanity, except justice? And what is justice, except
piety? And piety is simply recognition of God our parent.

Man's special capacity for worshipping God

1CX1M an’s supreme good consists thus in religion alone. Everything else,
including items thought peculiar to man, can be found in the other animals
too. 2 Whenever animals pick out their own utterances and sort them out
according to their particular noises, they appear to be in conversation with
each other. They also appear to have some sort of smile when they relax their
ears, compress the mouth and roll their eyes in play, jesting at man or at their
own kind. As for their own mates and offspring, they surely share with them
some sort of mutual love and sympathy. 3 Animals which look to their future
and lay up food are certainly exercising foresight, and signs of thought can
be seen in many. W hen they look for what will be useful to them, when they
take precautions against hurt and avoid danger, when they arrange their lairs
with plenty of exits, they are obviously showing intelligence. 4 A power of
thought in them is undeniable, since they often fool man himself. There is
perhaps a perfect foresight in the ones with a duty of making honey: they
occupy allotted sites, build defensive works, construct their houses with
unbelievable skill, and serve their king. 5 It is not clear, therefore, whether
capacities granted to man are shared with other creatures, but a religious
capacity is certainly missing. 6 In my view, all animals have been given a
power of thought, but the dumb ones were given it only to preserve life
whereas man was given it to extend life. Because reason is perfected in man,

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it is called wisdom: wisdom makes man special through the unique gift to
him of understanding things divine.

7 Cicero's view on this is sound. 'Of all the species, there is no animal,'
he says [Leg. 1.24], 'apart from man which has any knowledge of god, and
among men themselves there is no race either so civilised or so savage as not
to know that some sort of god must be entertained even if his proper nature
is not known. 8 Consideration of one's own origins thus entails acknow¬
ledgement of god.’ 9 Philosophers who want to set souls free of all fear remove
religion as well, and deprive man of his own unique good, causing separa¬
tion from the good life and from all humanity; for just as God made all living
things subject to man, so he made man subject to himself. 10 What reason
have these fellows for disputing the need to aim the mind where the face is
lifted up? 12 If we have no other reason for gazing at heaven than religion,
then if religion is removed we have no rational link with heaven at all. 11 We
must either gaze at heaven or fall to the ground. Falling to the ground is
impossible even if we wanted it, since we stand erect. 12 We must therefore
gaze at heaven: our physical estate requires it. If there is agreement on that,
then it must be done either in the service of religion or to give us knowledge
of things celestial. 13 But knowledge of things celestial is something we can¬
not attain, because nothing of that sort can begot by thinking, as I explained
above. 14 It is religion then that we must serve. A nyone not accepting that
plunges himself to the ground and lives the life of animals, abandoning his
humanity. 15 The ignorant thus have the greater wisdom: they may err in
their choice of religion, but they do take note of their own nature and estate.

Religion, wisdom, and the claims of virtue to be the supreme good

HI The whole human race is therefore united in agreeing that religion
ought to be upheld. Now to explain how it goes wrong.

2 God deliberately created man with such a nature that a pair of things
would be his great desire, and these are religion and wisdom. Peoplego wrong
either in taking up religion and forgetting wisdom or in going for wisdom
alone and forgetting religion. One without the other cannot be sound. 3 Thus
they fall fora multiplicity of religions, all false, however, because they leave
out the wisdom which could teach them that a multiplicity of gods is impos¬
sible. Alternatively they go for wisdom, but then that is false because they leave
out worship of God most high who could guide them towards knowledge of

12 Cic. Leg. 1.26; N.D. 2.140.

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the truth. 4 People adopting one or the other thus lead a life that deviates and
is full of massive error, since it is in the inseparable combination of the two
that the duty of man and the whole of truth are found united.

5 The complete failure of any philosopher to find the hearth and home of
the supreme good puzzles me. 6They could haveenquired asfollows: what¬
ever the supreme good is, it must be available to all. Pleasure is something
which all seek, but it is shared with animals, it has no force for good, it
causes satiety, in excess it does damage, it diminishes with the passage of
time, and many miss out on it; peopleshorton wealth, who are the majority,
are bound to be short on pleasure too. Pleasure therefore is not the supreme
good, and it is not even a good. 7 The same is even truer of wealth. Even
fewer achieve wealth; it generally comes by accident, and often without
effort, and sometimes through crime; it is notably desired by people who
have it already. 8 Kingship? No: not even kingship. All men cannot be king,
and everybody must be capable of the supreme good.

9 So let us look for something available to everybody. Virtue? Virtue is
undeniably a good, and certainly a universal good, but because all its natural
energy goes in the endurance of evil, it cannot be a state of bliss, and so it is
plainly not the supreme good. Let us look for something else. 10 Oh, but
there’s nothing as attractive as virtue, nothing as worthy of a wise man! If
vices are to be shunned because of their ugliness, then virtue is to besought
for its beauty! So what? Is it possible for something agreed to be good and
reputable to have no reward or prize, to be such a dead end that no benefit
comes of it? 11AII that toil and trouble, all that wrestling with evil which life
is so full of, must surely result in some great good. 12 W hat shall we say it
is? Pleasure? But nothing disreputable can come from what is reputable.
Wealth? Power? But those are fragile and transitory things. Glory? Honour?
A name that lives on? Those have no pi ace in virtue itself: they all depend on
the opinion and judgment of others. 13 Virtue is often envied, and affected
by evil. The good that comes of virtue ought to stick with it so closely that it
cannot be split apart and torn away, and it cannot be seen as the supreme
good unless it is both peculiar to virtue and incapable of addition or
subtraction itself. 14 What of the fact that the duties of virtue consist in
despising all these things? Pleasure, wealth, power, honours and all the
thi ngs that are treated as goods are exactly w hat it i s the mark of vi rtue not to
desire, not to seek and not to love the way all other people do, who are
victims of their lust. 15 Virtue thus achieves something loftier and more
glorious, and its struggle against these immediate goods is not in vain,
except that its real desire is for things greater and truer still. Let us not

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despair of it ever being found, then, provided our investigation looks in
every direction: the prizes on offer are neither slight nor contemptible.

The supreme good is immortality, not virtue

321 If the question is what we get born for and what virtue does, we can
investigate as follows. There are two constituents of man, spirit and body.
There are many things specific to the spirit and many specific to the body
and many common to both, like virtue itself; when virtue is related to the
body, for the sake of distinction it is called courage. 2 Since courage under¬
lies each constituent, each has fighting in front of it, and in the fighting each
can be victorious. Because the body is material and graspable, it is bound to
compete with material and graspable things, whereas the spirit, being slight
and invisible, grapples with those enemies which cannot be seen and touched.
3 The obvious enemies of spirit are lust, vice and sin. If virtue conquers them
and puts them to rout, the spirit will emerge unblemished and pure. 4 What
spiritual courage achieves can only be understood by comparison with what
is linked to it and equal with it, which is physical courage; when it comes to
grappling and fighting, the only prize for winning issurvival. Whether you
fight with man or with beast, the fight is for your life. 5 In winning, the body
achieves its aim of not dying; likewise the spirit in winning achieves its aim
of living on. Defeat by its enemies costs the body itslife; likewise, defeat by
vice entails the death of the spirit. 6 The only difference between the spirit’s
fight and the body's fight will be that the body wants life for a while and the
spirit wants life eternal. 7 If then virtue is not a state of bliss itself (since, as
I said, all its energy goes in enduring evil), if it ignores everything that
people lust for as if they were goods, if its supreme manifestation exposes it
to death (since it mostly rejects life that everyone else wants and bravely
takes on death that everyone else fears), if some great good must needs be
the product of it (since labours undertaken and overcome even unto death
cannot be without reward), 8 if no reward worthy of it is found on earth
(si nee it spurns all thi ngs that are feeble and transitory), then the only option
left is to achieve something celestial since it despises all things earthly, and
to strive for the heights since it despises the depths; that achievement can
only be immortality.

9 Euclides the founder of the M egarian school, 13 no nonentity among

13 Euclides (c. 450-c. 380 BC) was an associate of Socrates and Plato. His school blended
Socratic and Cynic ethics. See D.L. 10.106-112.

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philosophers, was right in his disagreement with all the others to say the
supreme good was something consistently the same. 10 He saw, presumably,
what the nature of the supreme good is even though he could not explain
what it is. it is immortality, and absolutely nothing else, because immortality
is the only thing that cannot be diminished, enlarged or changed. 11 Seneca
also happened to admit, unawares, that immortality was the only prize of
virtue. In praising virtuein the book hewroteon Premature Death, he says
'Virtue is the one thing which could give us immortality and make us the
equals of the gods.' 14 12 Even the Stoics, however, whom he followed, say
that no one can achieve bliss without virtue. The reward of virtue is a life of
bliss therefore if, as is rightly said, a life of bliss is the creation of virtue. 13
So virtue does not have to be sought for itself, as they say, but for the life of
bliss, which is the necessary consequence of virtue. 14 That argument could
have shown them what the supreme good was. This present, corporeal life
cannot be bliss because it is subject through the body to evil. 15 Epicurus
calls god blessed and incorrupt because he is eternal. 15 Bliss ought to be
perfect, so that there can be nothing to upset, diminish or change it; 16
nothing can be thought of as blessed if it is not incorruptible, and anything
incorruptible must be immortal. Only immortality is blessed, because it
cannot be undone or corrupted. 17 If virtue occurs in a man, and undeniably
it does, then bliss occurs also: no one with virtue can possibly be miserable.
If bliss occurs, then immortality also occurs, which is bliss. 18 Thus the
supreme good is revealed as immortality, because no other animal or body
attains it, and it cannot reach anyone without the exercise of knowledge and
virtue, without, that is, the acknowledgement of God and the exercise of
justice. 19 The right and truth of the search for it is revealed by our greed for
this life: temporary it may be and very full of trouble, but everybody has an
earnest desire for it; itisthewish of old and young, of kings and beggars, of
wise and stupid. 20 Contemplation of the sky and of light itself is, as Anax¬
agoras saw, so prized that any miseries you like can be endured. 21 Since
then this brief and troublesome life is thought to be a great good by common
consent not only of people but also of all other creatures, it is plain that it also
becomes the supreme and perfect good if itisfreeof termination and all evil.

22 Finally, there would never have been anyone to despise this life in its
brevity or to undergo death unless in hope of a longer life. Those who have
willingly sacrificed themselves to save their fellow citizens, likeM enoeceus

14 Sen. F62,176 (Vottero).

15 Epic, ad fr. 360, p. 241,15 (Usener)

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in Thebes, Codrus at Athens, and Curtius and the Decii at Rome, would
never have put death before the benefits of life if they had not thought they
were achieving immortality in the esteem of their fellows. 16 They did not
know the path of immortality, but the event did not deceive them. 23 If virtue
despises riches and wealth because they are fragile, and if it despises
pleasures because they are short-lived, then it despises a short and fragile life
in order to achieve one which is secure and long-lasting.

24 Thus analysis, proceeding step by step and taking everything into
account, brings us to that unique and wonderful good which is the reason for
our birth. 25 If philosophers had done that instead of preferring a jealous
protection of their one moment of understanding they would surely have
arrived at this truth as I showed it just now. A nd if that was not the interest of
those who destroy celestial souls together with their bodies, then those who
discuss the immortality of the soul ought at least to have understood that
virtue has been made available to us so that our lusts may be tamed, our
desire for earthly things be subdued, and our souls return pure and victorious
to God who is their origin.

26 Alone among living creatures we are erect to behold the sky so that
we may have faith that our highest good is in the heights, 27 and we alone
practise religion so that we may know the human spirit is not mortal because
it yearns for God who is immortal and because it acknowledges him. 28 Of
all philosophers, those who have accepted either knowledge or virtue as the
supreme good have at least got on to the path of truth, but have not reached
its summit. 29 These are the two things which together can achieve what’s
wanted: knowledge provides that we know how and whereweareto go, and
virtue ensures that we get there. One without the other is useless: from
knowledge comes virtue, and from virtue the supreme good.

30 The life of bliss which philosophers have always sought and do so
still, whether in worship of gods or in philosophy, is non-existent: they could
never have found it because they looked for the highest good in the depths
and notin the heights. 31 What is highest if not heaven and God the source
of spirit? W hat is lowest if not earth the source of body? 32 Granted, some
philosophers may have attributed the supreme good to spirit and not body,
but because they related it to this life which ends when the body ends, so
they were back with body, to which belongs all this span of time passed on
earth. 33 Their failure to grasp the supreme good iswell deserved: anything

16 For M enoeceus son of Creon, seeEur. Ph. 905-1012,1090-92; for Codrus king of Athens
(11th cent? BC), see Pherec. FGrH 3 F 154; for M .Curtius (d. 362 BC), see Livy 7.6.3-5; for
the Decii (340 and 295 BC), see Livy 8.9 and 10.28.6-18; with M in. Fel. 7.3.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

189

focussed on body and ignorant of immortality must belong on the lowest
level. 34 Bliss does not come to a man in the way philosophers have assumed
therefore; it is timed to come not when he is living in his body, which has to
be corrupted in order to be undone, but when his soul has been freed of the
body’s company and lives in the spirit alone. 35 The only way in which we
can know bliss in this life is to think ourselves minimally blissful, to shun the
temptations of pleasure, to serve virtue alone, and to live with maximum toil
and misery, for that is the training ground of virtue where virtue gets its
strength; we must cling to that rough and arduous path which has been shown
usleadingto beatitude. 36 The supreme good which brings us bliss can exist
only in the religion and the learning that is linked to hope of immortality.

Moral philosophy alone important; moral philosophers disastrously in
error

33.1 At this point, now that we have shown that the supreme good is
immortality, the situation seems to demand that we prove the immortality of
the soul. 2 On this there is enormous disagreement among philosophers;
even those with a true sentiment about it have nevertheless been unable to
demonstrate their understanding to a point of establishing it. 3 They lack the
relevant learning about God; they have failed to present arguments sound
enough to prevail or evidence sound enough as proof. We will deal with this
problem more conveniently in the final book, when our business will be to
discuss the life of bliss.

4 There remains a third area of philosophy, called 617 'logic'. It contains
all dialectic and all systematic utterance. 5 Learning aboutGod has no need
of this because wisdom lives in the heart, not the tongue, and it does not
matter what form of utterance you employ. The stuff of utterance is in
question, and not its form. Our business too is not with professional linguists
or orators, whose knowledge lies in how oneoughtto speak; weare discuss¬
ing the wise man, whose learning lies in how one ought to live. 6 If neither
natural philosophy nor logic are necessary, however, because they cannot
produce bliss, then the effective contribution of all philosophy must be
confined to ethics; that is what Socrates is said to have studied, abandoning
everything else.

7 Even within ethics, now that i have shown the error of those philo¬
sophers who failed to grasp the supreme good which we were born to aim

17 G indicates that L. uses or quotes Greek.

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for, it is plain that all philosophy is hopelessly mistaken because it neither
prepares us for the practi ce of j ustice nor bri ngs the duty and purpose of man
to joint fulfilment. 8 Those who think philosophy is wisdom need to know
their mistake; they must not be led astray by anyone, however authoritative:
instead they must back the truth and support it. There is no room for
adventurousness: punishment for folly lasts for ever, whether the error was
caused by a stupid person or a mistaken opinion. 9 As for an individual
human being of whatever sort trusting in himself - trusting in a human being,
that is - I won't say he's a fool for not seeing his mistake, but he's certainly
over-confident in daring to claim for himself what his human condition
disallows. 10 Even the greatest exponent of the Latin language went wrong,
as can be seen from a passage in his de Officiis [2.5]: 'Philosophy is simply
the pursuit of wisdom,’ he said, 'and wisdom itself is knowledge of things
divine and things human;’ then he added, 'I really don't understand what
someonewho reviles the pursuitcan think worth praising in it at al 1.11 If the
aim is refreshment of the mind and respite from anxieties, what can be
compared with the pursuits of people who are always looking for something
powerfully focussed on a life of bliss? If note is taken of persistence and
virtue, then either this is the system by which we can attain them or there is
no system at all. To say that there is no system where matters of the utmost
importance are concerned when there is no unimportant matter without its
system is the language of people speaking without proper reflection, people
much astray on matters of the utmost importance. If any training in virtue
exists, where shall it be sought when you withdraw from that sort of learn¬
ing?’ 12 I have made efforts myself to achieve what little skill I could in
speaking because of my career in teaching, but I have never been eloquent,
because I never went into public life; 18 nevertheless, where a knowledge of
things divine together with the truth itself is enough for an eloquent and
abundant defence of a case, then the very excel I ence of that case i s bound to
make me eloquent.

13 I wish that Cicero could rise, even briefly, from the underworld, so
that such a giant of eloquence could be instructed by a pigmy of no elo¬
quence. First, I would ask him what a man who reviles the pursuit called
philosophy would think worth praise at all; second, I should tell him that
philosophy is not the skill by which virtue and justice get learnt, as he
thought it was, nor is it any other kind of skill; finally, since a training in

18 L. produced advocates, administrators and politicians, but did not himself pursue a
public career.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

191

virtue does exist, I should ask him whereto lookfor it once you move away
from that sort of learning; not that he put his question with a view to
listening and learning: who could have given him an answer when nobody
knew? 14 Hefollowed his usual court practice, putting on pressure through
cross-examination and trying to force a confession as if he were sure there
was simply no other response possible except that philosophy was the
teacher of virtue. He made this very obvious in his Tusculan Disputations
[5.5], in a speech devoted to philosophy, virtually boasting in declamatory
style, 15 '0 philosophy, guide of life, searcher out of virtue, driver out of
vice! What could I, what could human life, have done without you! 0
philosophy, you have been our inventor of laws, our teacher of morality and
discipline!’ 16 as if it were sentient of itself and the praise didn't belong
instead to the one who provided it. Cicero could just as well have said
thankyou to food and drink, on the grounds that without them life can't exist;
but there's no more benevolence in them than sentience. Yet there is an
analogy: food feeds the body, and the soul is fed on wisdom.

Philosophy cannot teach how to live

M.1 L ucreti us put it better: he praises the inventor of wisdom, but his praise
was clumsy because he thought it was invented by a man - as if the man he
prai ses f ound i 11 y i ng around I i ke pi pes at a spri ng, to quote the poets. 2 L ucre¬
ti us praised the inventor of wisdom as if he were a god: his words are [5.6-
8]: 'Hewill be no onein my opinion born of mortal body. If I must put it as
is demanded by the very greatness of the world once understood, he was a
god, most noble M emmius, a god.' 3 Even so, God was not to be praised like
that for inventing wisdom but for inventing man with the capacity to get
wisdom. Praising partfor whole is a diminution of the praise. 4 He praised
him, in fact, as a man, but as a man who ought to be treated as a god for his
invention of wisdom; as he says [5.50-51], 'Will it not be right for this man
to be counted in the number of the gods?' 5 It is clear from this that his
intention was to praise either Pythagoras, the first person, as I said, to call
himself philosopher, orThales of M iletus, who is said to have been the first
to discuss natural phenomena. 6 in seeking to praise a man he downgraded
the invention: it can't be much of a thing if it can be invented by a man. 7 But
we can grant him the indulgence proper to a poet.

As for Cicero, at once perfect orator and supreme philosopher (and I
don't want to get at the Greeks: he's always at them for trivialising things,
though he follows them nonetheless), sometimes he cal Is wisdom a gift and

192

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

sometimes a discovery of the gods [Tusc. 1.64]; either way in presenting its
essence metaphorically he praises it to its face. 8 H e even complains bitterly
of the existence of some who attacked it. 'Has anyone the nerve,’ he says
[5.6], 'to criticise the parent of his life, befouling himself with parricide and
being so wickedly ungrateful?’ 9 Does that make me a parricide, my dear
Cicero, and should I be sewn up in a sack 19 on your verdict for denying that
philosophy is parent of my life, 10 or should you be, for being so wickedly
ungrateful towards God, not the god whose image you worship as it sits
upon the Capitol, but the one who made the world and created man, and
bestowed upon him wisdom too, among all his other celestial kindnesses?
You call philosophy teacher of virtue, do you, or parent of life? Anyone who
grapples with philosophy is bound to become much more confused than he
was before. 11 Which virtue is meant? Philosophers still can't sort out its
location. Which life? The experts will beworn out by old ageordeath before
they have decided how life should be lived themselves. Which truth can you
claim that philosophy is searching out, when you say so often that 'though
there have been so many phi losophers, there has never yet been a w ise man’? 20

12 So what has this teacher of life taught you then? How to fling curses
at a powerful consul, and to dub him the enemy of his country with speeches
of venom? 21 But let’s leave out what can be excused under the heading of
luck. 13 After all, you pursued philosophy, Cicero, none more diligently;
you learnt all its disciplines, as you say with such frequent pride, you set it
out in lucid Latin and proved yourself a follower of Plato. 22 14 So come, tell
us what you learnt, or in what school you caught up with truth. In the
Academy, no doubt: you followed theAcademy and held it up for approval.
15 But all theAcademy teaches is to know one'sown ignorance. So itisyour
own works which prove how non-existent philosophy's teaching is for life.
Here are your own words: 'In my view we are not only blind as regards
wisdom, but dim and dull about the very things that can to some extent be
seen.' 23 16 If philosophy is the teacher of life, why did you see yourself as

19 Parricides were traditionally drowned in a leather sack. See also 5.9.16.

20 L. seems to have in mind de Orat. 1.94, where Cicero has Antonius say that though he
has known a number of skilled speakers, he has not yet known anyone of real eloquence.

21 L. refers to Cicero's Philippics, delivered against M ark Antony the triumvir in 44-43
BC. They take their name from those delivered by Demosthenes in defence of Athens against
Philip of M acedon.

22 See Cic. Leg. 3.1; cf. Rep. 1.36. Cicero's works which are named after Plato's Laws and
Republic have similarities with them in both structure and content.

23 Cic. Ac. fr. 25.5 (Plasberg).

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

193

blind, dim and dull? U nder her instruction you should have become wise,
sensitive and thoroughly illuminated! 17 How much you trusted in the truth
of philosophy comes clear in the advice you gave your son, where you tell
him that 'the precepts of philosophy must be learnt, but life is to be lived
conventionally.' 24 18 W hat could be more contradictory? If the precepts of
philosophy are something to be learnt, that is simply so that we may live life
properly and wisely; alternatively, if we must live conventionally, then
philosophy is not wisdom, since it’s better to live conventionally than as a
philosopher. 19 If wisdom is what is called philosophy, anyone not living in
accordance with philosophy will plainly be living stupidly, whereas if
anyone living conventionally is not living stupidly, it follows that anyone
living by philosophy is living stupidly. Philosophy is thus condemned for
stupidity and futility on your own judgment. 20You came to that conclusion
about philosophy in your Consolatio too, not a work of humour: 'I don't
know; some confusion, some wretched ignorance of the truth gets hold of
us.' 25 So whereisphilosophy'steaching role, and whathaveyou learntfrom
the parent of life, if you are so wretchedly ignorant of the truth? 21 If this
admission of confusion and ignorance has been wrung from the depths of
your heart against your will, you should tell yourself the truth some time,
that philosophy, which you have praised to the skies though it taught you
nothi ng, cannot be the teacher of vi rtue.

Philosophers are not good men

ISulSeneca made the same mistake (when Cicero strayed, who could keep
straight?). 'Philosophy,' he said, 'is simply the right system of life, or the
knowledge of how to live honestly, or the skill of living uprightly. We shall
not be wrong if we say that philosophy is a law for living a good and honest
life; anyone calling it the rule of life gives it its due.' 26 2 Seneca clearly had
no regard for the usual meaning of the word. Philosophy is split into numbers
of sects and schools, and has nothing fixed about it; nothing, that is, which
everyone can agree to with unanimity. It is a complete mistake to call it
either the rule of life when the diversity of guidance in it obstructs the true
path and confuses it, ora law for living well when its chapter headings are all
in disagreement, or the knowledge of how to run one’s life when repetition

24 Cic. Ep. fr. 6 p. 95 (Weyssenhof) (=V111 4 Watt).

25 Cic. consol, fr. 2 (Vitelii).

26 Sen. F82,182 (Vottero).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

of views that contradict each other leads only to no one knowing anything at
all. 3 Does he think the Academy is philosophy, I wonder, or not? I don't
think he’ll say it isn't. If it is, then noneof his phrases belongs: theAcademy's
aim is to maximise uncertainty; hence its abrogation of law, its denial of
skill, itsoverthrow of reason, its twisting of the rules and its utter destruction
of knowledge. All his phrases are thus untrue, because they cannot work
with an uncertainty that is persistently unproductive. 4 There is therefore no
system or knowledge or law of living well except in this wisdom of ours,
which is unique, true and celestial, and quite unkown to philosophers.
5 Earthly philosophy is wrong; hence its variety and multiplicity and total
self-contradiction. There is only one maker and ruler of this world, and there
is only one truth; wisdom is bound also to be single and simple, because
anything good and true cannot be perfectly so unless it is uniquely so.

6 If philosophy could teach life, only philosophers would be good; any
non-philosophers would all be utterly bad. 7 But since there are countless
people, and always have been, who are or were good without learning,
whereas among philosophers there were very seldom any who did anything
praiseworthy in their lives, everybody can see that in the end those people
aren't teachers of virtue: they haven’t got it to start with. 8 Anyone investi¬
gating their behaviour carefully will find them bad-tempered people, greedy,
lustful, proud, shameless, and hiding their faults under a mask of wisdom
while doing at home what they would have slated in school.

9 M y desire to attack makes me exaggerate, you think? Cicero allows my
claim, and makes his own complaint [Tusc. 2.11-12], 'How often do you
find a philosopher,' he says, 'who has lived his life in the spirit and form that
reason demands, who thinks his learning is not a show of knowledge but a
law for living, who controls himself and obeys hi sown instructions? You can
see some so full of trivial self-glorification that they’d have done better not
to study at all, some greedy for money, some for glory, many the slaves of
their lusts, so that what they say is in wondrous conflict with how they live.’
10 Cornelius N epos, too, in a letter to Cicero says: 'I am so far from thinking
philosophy the teacher of life and perfecter of bliss that I think no one needs
teachers of living more than those who discuss the topic so busily. Of all
those who give such shrewd advice in school on modesty and self-control I
seethe majority living on their passions, living in lust.’ 27 11 So too Seneca;
he says in his Exhortations: 28 'M any a philosopher is the sort of man who is

27 Cic. Ep. fr. 1, V11B, p. 31 (Weyssenhof) (= 11A Watt).

28 Sen. F77,194 (Vottero).

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

195

eloquent to his own reproof. If you heard them denouncing greed, lust and
ambition, you would think they had turned informer, the attacks they once
launched at the public now so rebound upon themselves. They ought to be
thought of like doctors; there's a cure on the label, but there’s poison in the
bottle. 12 Some are not restrained by shame even; they construct defences
for their disgraceful behaviour, so that it will look as if they erred in good
faith. 13 A wiseman,' he continues, 'will even do what he disapproves of to
gain access to more important things; he won't desert his principles but he
will adapt them to the situation; what others employ for their glory or their
pleasure he will employ to achieve his aim.' 29 14 A little further on: 'A wise
man will do all the things that the extravagant and the ignorant do, but not in
the same way and noton the same basis.' 30 And yet, the intend on with which
you do something that is wrong is immaterial: it is what is done that gets
seen, and not the intention. 15 Aristippus, head of the Cyrenaics, had a
rel ationshi p w ith L ais, the famous prostitute. T his di sti nguished professor of
philosophy used to defend such scandalous behaviour by claiming there was
a world of difference between himself and Lais’ other lovers: she kept them,
but he kept her. 16 That is a wonderful model of wisdom for good men!
Would you give him your sons to teach, to become expert in keeping a
mistress? He claimed a difference between himself and mere wastrels; they
were wasting their goods, whilehewasindulgingforfree, 17 but the advan¬
tage of wisdom lay rather with Lais; she had a philosopher for her pimp, so
that all the young would rush to her with no feelings of shame, corrupted by
the example and the authority of their teacher.

18 So what difference did it make what intention the philosopher had in
visiting his infamous mistress, when everyone, including his rivals, could
see he was worse than all the wastrels? 19 Even living like that wasn't
enough, either; he began to give cl asses on lust, transferring his own behavi¬
our from brothel to schoolroom, and arguing that physical pleasure was the
supreme good. T hat i s a I oathsome and di sgusti ng doctri ne; no phi losopher’s
mind produced it: only a tart’s embrace.

20 What can I say of the Cynics, 31 who have a habit of intercourse with
their wives on the doorstep? Is it any wonder that they get their nickname

29 Sen. F79,196 (Vottero).

30 Sen. F80,196 (Vottero).

31 Cynicism (lit. Doggishness) was a way of life rather than a philosophy, but it made philo¬
sophical claims, in particular that virtue consists in living in accordance with primitive nature.
The most famous Cynic was Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412/403-c. 324/321), but the first may have
been A ntisthenes, a devotee of Socrates.

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from the dogs whose lifestyle they imitate? 21 There is no instruction in
virtue in this sect; even those who give comparatively good advice either
don't practise what they preach, or if they do, which is rare, it is not their
learning which directs them towards right but nature, which commonly
causes even the uninstructed to do what is admirable.

Opt for wisdom, dispense with philosophy

i&lThey surrender themselves to perpetual sloth, they make no attempt at
virtue at all, and they spend ail their lives in fine talk: the only reputation
they deserve is one for laziness. 2 Wisdom is futile and bogus if it is not
active in some way that puts its power to work, and Cicero was quite right to
put teachers of philosophy below people in public life who guide affairs of
state, who setup new communities or sustain old ones with equity, and who
preserve the lives and liberties of citizens with good laws, sound advice and
sober judgment. 32 3 It is better that good men act than shut themselves up in
a corner, recommending action they would not take themselves; they have
withdrawn from real action, and they have plainly lit upon the game of
philosophy either to keep their tongues going or to withdraw altogether.
People who only teach and don't act diminish the substance of their advice.
W ho is to obey, when the lesson of those very teachers is to disobey? 4 It is
good to recommend what is right and reputable, but if you do not act
accordingly, what you say is a lie, and it is contradictory and stupid to keep
goodness on your lips and not in your heart.

5 Their aim in philosophy is not something useful but pleasure, as Cicero
bears witness. 'In all their controversy,' he says, 'there are rich seams of
virtue and knowledge, but when comparison is made with their actions and
achievements, I'm afraid itmay seem more a contribution to the amusement
of their idleness than to serious business.' 33 6 Cicero should not have been
afraid of telling the truth, but perhaps he feared being summoned by the
philosophers to answer a charge of betraying a mystery, and so failed to tell
the truth boldly, that philosophers do not argue for the sake of their teaching
but for the amusement of thei r idleness. They press for action but do nothi ng
themselves; treatment of them as mere talkers is inevitable. 7 They were
contributing nothing to the quality of life: no wonder they disobeyed their
own commands, and no wonder that no one has been found in all these
centuries to live life by their laws.

32 Cf. Cic. de Orat. 1.33ff., 219; Off. 1.43-44.

33 Cic. Hort. fr. 18 (Straume-Zimmermann).

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197

All philosophy must therefore be discarded: what is needed is not the
pursuit of wisdom, which lacks aim and limit, but wisdom itself, and soon,
too: 8 we have no second life allowed us so that we can look for wisdom in
this one and be wise in the next; this life must suffice for both. The finding of
wisdom must be quick, so that its adoption can be quick, in case we waste
any part of our unknown span of life.

9 Cicero’s Hortensius gets caught in a shrewd argument in speaking
against philosophy. 34 H e said that there was no need for it; but he appeared to
be using it nevertheless because it is a philosopher’s business to debate what
should and should not be done in life. 10 Now I dispense altogether with
philosophy, as a construct of the human mind, and I defend wisdom 35 as a
gift of God, and I say that everyone should take it up: so I am immune from
such attack. 11W hen Hortensius dispensed with philosophy and put nothing
in its place, he was thought to bedispensing with wisdom, and hewas easily
shifted from that ground, because of the general acceptance that man was
born to wisdom and not stupidity. 12 There is, besides, the very powerful
argument against philosophy used by Hortensius also: 'It can be understood
that philosophy is not wisdom from the fact that its origin and startpoint are
obvious. 13 When,' he asks, 'did philosophers come into existence? Thales
was the first, I think. That is quite recent. So where did the passion for
investigating truth hide itself in earlier generations?’ 36 14 Lucretius says the
same [5.335-37]: 'Finally, this is the system of natural phenomena lately
revealed, and I am first among the first to be revealed with the power to
present it in my native tongue.' 15 Seneca says: 'It is not a thousand years
since the first stirrings of wisdom.' 37 The human race therefore lived many
centuries without reason; hence the mockery of Persius [6.38-39], 'After
wisdom came to town, together with pepper and dates,' as if wisdom was
some savoury exotic. If wisdom is natural in man, then it must have begun
with man, and if it is not, then human nature could not acquire it anyway. 16
Since it does acquire it, however, it must have been therefrom the start; and
since philosophy was not there from the start, then it is not the same thing as
truewisdom. Because the Greeks had made no contact with thesacred litera¬
ture of truth, plainly they did not know the way in which wisdom had been

34 On 7-11, see Straume-Zimmermann 49.

35 Wisdom: L. uses here not his usual Latin word sapientia but the Greek word (trans¬
literated) sophia, to emphasise its relationship with philosophia, the love, or pursuit, of
wisdom. See 3.2.3 above.

36 On 12-16, see Straume-Zimmermann 52.

37 Sen. F83,198 (Vottero).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

distorted; they fabricated philosophy thinking that human life was devoid of
wisdom, but the truth was there all the time, unknown to them, and they
wilfully wrecked it by debate, calling their pursuit of it wisdom, in ignor¬
ance of the truth.

Errors of Epicurus

17.11 have spoken of philosophy itself as briefly as I could. Let us now turn
to the philosophers, not to fight them - they cannot resist anyway - but to see
them off our territory in abject flight.

2 M uch the best known of all the philosophies has always been Epicure¬
anism, 38 not for any contribution to truth it makes, but because its great name
for hedonism lures so many to it. Everyone is prone to vice, 3 and anyway, in
order to attract the masses, Epicureanism speaks to the lifestyles of
individuals. It recommends the lazy not to study, it liberates the mean from
public benefactions, it advises the coward against politics, the slothful against
exercise and the scared against a military career. 4 The irreligious are told
that the gods take no interest, and the selfish and unkind are instructed to
make no gifts, because the wise man does everything for his own sake. 39
5 Those who shun the bustle of life find solitude praised, and the overthrifty
learn that life can be sustained on bread and water. 40 Wife-haters are told the
benefits of celibacy, and parents with bad children hear well of childless¬
ness, while undutiful offspring are told that nature knows no ties. The soft
and sensitive understand that the worst of all evils is pain, and the brave that
even in agony the wise man is in bliss. 41 6 Those ambitious for fame and
power are encouraged to cultivate kings, and those who dislike trouble are
told to shun the court. 42 7 A shrewd fellow thus constructs himself a round of
behaviour of very great diversity, but in his anxiety to please the world he
goes to a bitterer war with himself than the world does with itself.

We must explain where all Epicurus’ learning comes from and what its
origin is. 8 He saw that good men are always liable to misery, in the shape of
poverty, toil, exile and loss of loved ones, whereas bad men flourish with
ever more power and influence; he saw that innocence is insecure while
crimes can be committed with impunity; he saw that death rages without

38 Epic. fr. 553 (Usener).

39 Epic, ad fr. 581 (p. 333,15 Usener).

40 Epic. fr. 571;471.

41 Epic, ad fr. 526 (p. 320, 4 Usener); fr. 529; ad fr. 401 (p. 276, 20; cf. p. 339, 8).

42 Epic. fr. 557 (Usener).

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

199

regard for morality, rank or age, some people reaching old age and others
being taken in infancy, some dying in their full maturity and others removed
in the first flower of youth with untimely deaths, and in war the best
particularly being conquered and killed. 43 9 He was most moved by the fact
that people of notable piety suffered very grievously, whereas the com¬
pletely irreligious or casual worshippers had few troubles or none; even
temples themselves would often go up in flames. 10 This is Lucretius’
objection, when he says of god [2.1101-04]: 'Let him fire his thunderbolts
then, and wreck his own temples, and withdraw to a wilderness, furiously
practising a weapon which so often misses the guilty and destroys the
undeserving.' 11 If he’d had even a breath of the truth, however, he would
never say 'wreck his own temples' because their wrecking was due to their
not being God’s. 12 T he Capitol, which isthe chief thing in thecity of Rome
and its religion, has been struck by lightning and gone up in flames notonce
but several times. 13 The opinion of learned men on this can be seen in what
Cicero says [Ver. 4.69]: 'The fire had a divine origin; its purpose was not to
destroy Jupiter’s domicile on earth but to demand one more sublime and
more magnificent.’ 14 In de Consulatu he echoes Lucretius’ words: 'J upiter
thundering on high leant on starry Olympus and aimed for his own citadel
with its famous temples, and flung his fire on the shrines of the Capitol.’ 44
15 By their persistent stupidity they not only failed to understand the power
and majesty of the true god but also exacerbated the impiety of their own
mistakes in striving, against all propriety, to restore a temple so often
damned by judgment of heaven.

16 Such was the view of Epicurus, encouraged by the unfairness of
things, as it seemed to him in his ignorance of the real reason. 45 Hence his
opinion that there is no providence. Having convinced himself of this, he
undertook to defend his conviction, and got himself tied up inextricably. 17 If
there is no providence, how come the world is so organised and ordered?
'There is no order,’ says Epicurus. 'M uch occurs otherwise than it ought.' 46
Cl ever fellow! He even found some points of attack. 18 If there were time to
reject them one by one, I would easily show that he was neither wise nor

43 Epic. fr. 370 (Usener).

44 The lines are quoted twice in Cic. Div. 1.19; 2.45. The wording of the second line,
however, is slightly different. The idea occurs in Lucr. 6.379-422, and more briefly in 2.1093-
1104, of which the key words are cited in 10 above. Lucretius is likely to have taken it over from
earlier Epicurean writers.

45 Epic. fr. 370. This is based simply on Lucr. 4.823-57.

46 Cf. Lucr. 5.195-234.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

sane. Again, if there is no providence, how come the bodies of animals are
formed so providently that every single limb is designed with wonderful
sense to sustain itsfunctions? 19 'In the generation of animals,’ he says, 'no
system of providence is at work. Eyes were not made for seeing norearsfor
hearing nor tongue for speech nor feet for walking because these organs
were all created before there was seeing, hearing, talk or walking. They were
therefore not created for use: use developed from them.’ 47 20 If there is no
providence, why does rain fall or fruit grow or trees burst into leaf? 'Those
things do not happen for the sake of the animals,’ he says, 'because they are
no use to providence; everything necessarily happens of its own accord.' 48
21 So where do they come from, or how does everything happen that does
happen? 'It is not the work of providence,' he says; 'there are seeds of things
which float through space, and it is from their accidental combination that
everything gets born and grows.’ 49 22 So why don't we perceive or see these
seeds? 'Because they have no colour,' he says, 'nor warmth or smell. They
are also devoid of flavour and moisture, and are so small that they cannot be
cut or split.’ 50 2 3 That is the madness inevitably produced in consequence of
a false premiss at the start. W here are those tiny bodies, or where do they
come from? Why did they never enter anyone's dreams except uniquely
those of Leucippus, who taught Democritus, who left the inheritance of folly
to Epicurus? 24 If there are tiny bodies, and they are as sol id as is said, surely
they can get seen. If they are all identical in nature, how are things created
different? 'They come together,' he says, 'in different sequences, likeletters
of the alphabet, which are few in number but create countless different words
by shifts of position.' 51 25 But letters have different shapes. 'So do the basic
elements,’ says he. 'There are rough ones, barbed ones and smooth ones.' 52
But if there is anything in them which projects, then they can be cut and split.
And if there are smooth ones without barbs, they cannot cohere. They ought
to be barbed then, in order to make combinations in their turn. 26 But when
they are said to be so small that they cannot be split by any metal edge, how
come they have barbs and projections? Barbs and projections stand out, and
so must be detachable. 27 W hat are the terms, the plan, on which they meet
to create something out of themselves? If they lack sense they cannot come

47 See note on 16 above.

48 Cf. Lucr. 5.156-94.

49 See especially Lucr. 2.1048-66; 5.187-94, 416-31.

50 For 22-27, see Epic. fr. 287 (Usener).

51 Cf. Lucr. 2.478ff„ 660ff„ 688-99.

52 Cf. Lucr. 2.333ff., 381-477.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

201

together in any organised fashion: only reason can create something
rational.

28 What a wealth of refutation this stupidity produces! On with the
debate, however. Epicurus is the man 'who outdid the human race in genius
and quelled them all as the rising sun in the sky puts out the stars' [Lucr.
3.1043-3]. I can never read those verses without a laugh. 29 He wasn't
speaking of Socrates, or of Plato, who are treated as the kings of philosophy,
but of someone who in his fullest sanity was more crazily mad than any sick
man. Leonine praise like that from the idiot poet has not distinguished his
mouse, but destroyed him and wiped him out. 30 Yet Epicurus is also the
man who frees us from fear of death. Here are his own express words on it
(D.L. 10.125): 'When we exist, death does not. When death exists, we do
not. Death is therefore nothing to us.’ 53 31 W hat a shrewdly bogus piece of
reasoning! As if death were to be feared when it has done its work of taking
sense away, rather than the process of dying when sense is being taken away.
There is a point of time when we no longer exist and death does not yet exist
either, and that is what seems so sad, because death’s existence is beginning
and our existence is failing. 32 There is also sense in his remark 'Death is not
sad; the onset of death is sad:’ 54 fading from illness, that is, suffering a
stroke, being stabbed, burning to death, being eaten alive; 33 that is what
men fear, not the onset of death but the onset of great pain. Better to hold that
pain is not an evil. 'It is the worst of all evils,’ he says. 55 How then can I fail
to be afraid, if what precedes death and causes it is evil? And what about the
utter nonsense of the argument anyway, because souls do notperish? 34 'Oh
yes, they do,' says he: 'what is born with the body must necessarily die with
the body.' 56 1 observed earlier that I am postponing this topic and keeping it
for the final book, to refute both by argument and with God’s evidence this
conviction of Epicurus - unless it belongs to Democritus, or else to Dicae-
archus. 57 3 5 Epicurus, however, perhaps promised himself impunity for his
faults: he was the champion of hedonism in all its horror; indeed, he thought
man was born for pleasure. 36 W ho would keep from vice and wickedness
on hearing that asserted? If souls are due to perish, let’sgo for wealth, so that

53 =Usenerp. 61, 6ff.

54 The origin of this is unclear, butcf. Sen. Ep. 30.9.

55 Epic, ad fr. 401 (p. 276, 18 Usener).

56 Cf. Lucr. 3.445-48, 634-39.

57 Dicaearchusof Messana (fl. 320-300 BC), a pupil of Aristotle, wrote extensively over a
wide range of subjects, including philosophy, politics, geography and literary and cultural
history.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

we can command all the pleasures, and if we have no wealth, let’s take it
from those who do, secretly, by treachery, by force, and if there's no god
who cares what men do, then let us plunder and kill all the more, whenever
the hope of impunity smiles upon us. 37 A wise man should do evil if it is
both advantageous and safe for him, because no god who may exist in
heaven gets cross with anyone. Equally, it is a fool’s errand to do good,
because divine favour is as slow to stir as divine wrath is. 38 Let us indulge
our pleasures in whatever way we can: in a little while we shall exist no more
at all. We must not let a single day, a single moment of time, slip past us
without its pleasure, in case we lose our life while living it just because we
shall lose it in the end. 58

39 That may not be word for word, but it is in effect his message. W hen-
ever he argues that wise men always act in their own interests, he is relating
everything wise men do to its usefulness. 59 40 Anyone listening to such
outrageous stuff will think that no good needs to be done since good deeds
look to the benefit of someone else, and no crime need be ducked because
bad deeds bring reward. 41 If some pirate chief or king of thieves were to
urge his men on to violence, what words can he employ other than those of
Epicurus, repeating them precisely? 42 The gods are not interested, he will
say; no wrath or gratitude stir them; there are no penalties underworld to
fear, because after death souls die and there simply is no underworld; the
supreme good is pleasure; human society does not exist; each man consults
his own interest; no one loves his neighbour except for hi sown purposes; no
brave man need fear death or pain, si nee even if he is being tortured or burnt,
he can say he does not care. 60 43 Is there any good reason for anyone to think
that talk like that is the mark of a wise man when it best befits brigands?

E rrors of Pythagoreans and Stoics and the criminality of suicide

l&lSome support the contrary position and argue for the survival of souls
after death. 61 Here the leaders are the Pythagoreans and the Stoics. The
correctness of their view earns some indulgence, but I cannot refrain from
criticism, in that they have tumbled upon the truth accidentally and not
intelligently. Hence some errors even in the basic soundness of their view.

58 Cf. Epic, ad fr. 491 (p. 308, 3 Usener).

59 Epic. fr. 581 (Usener).

60 Epic. adfr. 341 (p. 228,18 Usener); fr. 523; adfr. 540 (p. 324,16); adfr. 601 (p. 339,13).

61 L. deals with this subject at length in 7.3-13.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

203

2They were scared of the argument which concludes that soulsmustdie
with their bodies because they are born with the bodies; so they said instead
that souls do not get born but are rather inserted into bodies and transfer
from oneto another. 3They could not conceive a survival of souls after death
unless souls had apparently pre-existed bodies. Both parties have come to a
parallel and virtually identical error, but this lot arewrong about the past and
the Epicureans arewrong about the future. 4 None of them saw the obvious
truth, that souls get born and also do not die; why that should happen, or
what the purpose of man was, they did not know. 5 M any of those who
guessed that souls were eternal committed suicide as if they would then
transfer to heaven: Cleanthes, for instance, Chrysippus and Zeno, and Empe¬
docles, who flung himself into a fissure when Etna was erupting, at dead of
night, so that people would think from his sudden disappearance he had gone
to join the gods. On the Roman side there is Cato, who modelled himself all
his life on Stoic stupidity. 62 6 Democritus was of a different persuasion, but
even so 'he put himself in the pathway of death of his own accord' [Lucr.
3.1041], and there is nothing that can be worse than that. If a murderer is, by
being destroyer of a man, a criminal, then the man who kills himself comes
under the same heading because he too killsa man. 7 In fact, suicide should
be considered the greater crime because the avenging of it belongs to god
alone. We do not come into this life of our own accord; we should corres¬
pondingly retire from this corporeal abode, given us to guard, attheword of
that same one who put us in this body to abide there till he bids us begone.
At the occurrence of any violence at all, we must be calm and endure it,
because souls of the innocent destroyed cannot go unavenged, and venge¬
ance is pure only when exacted by our own great judge alone.

8 All those philosophers are murderers, then, including the prince of
Roman wisdom Cato; before he killed himself, so it is said, he read through
Plato’s work on the everlasting nature of the soul, and he resorted to the
supreme wickedness on the word of a philosopher. And yet he had some
reason apparently for dying, the hatred of enslavement. 9 Then there is the
fellow from Ambracia: 63 he read the selfsame work and flung himself off a

62 The first three named, and Cato, were Stoics. For a statement of the Stoic attitude to
suicide, see Sen. Ep. 77. M. Porcius Cato (95-46 BC), great-grandson of Cato the Censor, was
prominent in late Republican politics: hostile toj ulius Caesar, in peace and in war, he commit¬
ted suicide rather than accept Caesar's pardon. Augustine's discussion of suicide, in civ. 1.17-
27, features Cato (23-24). For suicide in antiquity, see Van Hooff (1990).

63 Theombrotus - his name is revealed in two sentences' time - was a Cynic philosopher
(end of 4th/beginning of 3rd cent.)

204

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

cliff simply because he trusted Plato. It is a doctrine to be cursed and
shunned if itdrives men out of life. 10 If Plato had known and said by whom
immortality is granted and how and to whom and why and when, he would
not have driven Theombrotus and Cato to their wilful deaths; he would have
educated them instead to life and justice. 11 It seems to me that Cato hunted
up his excuse for dying not to escape Caesar as much as to satisfy the
requirements of his chosen sect the Stoics, and to promote his own reputa¬
tion by some crime of great note; what evil could have befallen him had he
lived I can't imagine. 12 Caesar was a man of clemency: all he wanted, even
amid the passions of a civil war, was to earn his country’s approval by the
preservation of two fine citizens of it, Cicero and Cato. 64 Let us return
however, to those who praise death as a good.

13 You complain of life as if it were over, or as if you had ever estab¬
lished a reason for being born at all. That justifies a retort from the true father
of us all in the language of Terence: 'First learn what it is to live; if you don't
like it, try the other then.' 65 14 You are offended at being the victim of evil,
as if you deserved anything good when you don’t know your father, your
lord or your king; you gaze at the brightest light there is, and yet your mind
is blind, face down in the darkest depths of ignorance. That ignorance has
made some people not ashamed to say that we were born to pay for our
crimes. I cannot imagine anything more crazy. 15 What could our crimes
have been, and where could we have committed them when we simply
didn't exist, unless we believe that silly old fool who claimed he had been
Euphorbus in a previous life? He got himself a family from verses of Homer
because he had no pedigree of his own, i suppose. 16 What a uniquely
miraculous memory Pythagoras had, and how hopelessly forgetful weall are
in not knowing who we were before! Perhaps it is a mistake, or else an act of
favour, that only Pythagoras failed to reach the whirlpool of Lethe and taste
the water of oblivion. Obviously the old fool fabricated stories, like old
women without enough to do, for an audience of gullible children. 17 If he
had thoughtwell of his audience, if he had thoughtof them as men, hewould
never have claimed the right to lie so impudently. No: you have to despise
such a tritier's emptiness. 18 What shall we do with Cicero? At the start of
his Consolatio he said that men were born to pay for their crimes, and he
repeated it later, as if protesting against the view that life is not a

64 L. is less complimentary to Caesar at 1.15.29, where he calls him patriae parricida,
murderer of his fatherland.

65 Hau. 971-72.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

205

punishment. His first remark of all was right, that he was 'subject to con¬
fusion, and to a wretched ignorance of the truth.'

Death not a good if life was evil

mit is ignorance of the truth which makes those who discuss the good of
death argue their case as follows: if there is nothing after death, death is not
an evil because it takes away perception of evil. If on the other hand souls
survive, it is even a good, because immortality ensues. 2 This view is put by
Cicero in de Legibus: 'Let us congratulate ourselves, because death will
bring about a situation either better than there is in life or certainly no worse;
life in a living soul without a body is divine, and with no perception there is
certainly no evil.' 66 3 Shrewd words, it seems: as if there were no other
possibility. And yet, both the conclusions are wrong. Sacred literature says
that souls are not exti nguished; they are either rewarded for just behaviour or
punished for ever for their wickedness. 4 It is not right that anyone success¬
fully wicked in lifeshould escape what he deserves, or that anyone who has
suffered for his justice should be deprived of his reward. 5 The truth of that
is borne out by Cicero in his Consolatio: he says the just do not occupy the
same area as the wicked. 6 'Those same wise persons,’ he says, 'have
concluded that the same path to heaven is not open to all. People with the
stain of vice and crime upon them are sent down to darkness, they say, and
lie in filth, while clean souls of purity, integrity and honesty, models of good
ambitions and good practice, fly up to the gods, to a nature like their own,
that is, in a smooth and comfortable glide.’ 67 7 That view is at odds with the
case put previous to it. The assumption made is as if every man born must be
granted immortality. 8 Where is the distinction between virtue and vice if it
makes no difference whether someone was an Aristides 68 or a Phalaris, or a
Cato instead of a Catiline? 69 This conflict between facts and opinions is
impenetrable to anyone without the truth. 9 If I were asked whether death is
a good thing or a bad thing, my answer will be that its quality depends on the

66 Cic. Leg. fr. 1 (Ziegler, Leg.).

67 Cic. Consol, fr. 22 (Vitelli).

68 Aristides of Athens, nicknamed 'The J ust'; cf. Cic. Off. 3.16, 49, 87. For Phalaris the
notorious tyrant of A grigentum, see 2.4.27n.

69 L. Sergius Catilina: frustrated in politics, he turned to revolution, and died in battle
against the forces of the state inj anuary 62 BC. Cato was his fierce opponent in politics, as well
as being seen later as his moral antithesis: Cato forced through a senatorial decree which
ordered the execution of Catiline's followers in Rome.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

sort of life led. A life is a good thing if conducted virtuously and a bad thing
if wickedly; so too a death must be measured by the preceding acts of the
life. 10 Hence the fact that if the life were spent in worship of God, its death
would not be bad, because there is a transfer to immortality; if not, itwould
be bad of course, since, as I said, there is transfer to eternal torment.

111 can only conclude that people who seek death out as a good or who
shun it as an evil are wrong (not to mention their great iniquity in not weigh¬
ing the paucity of evil against the greater tally of good). 12 They spend their
whole life in a choice round of diverse pleasures and then they want to die as
soon as something nasty supervenes; they think they’ve never had it good if
they’ve once had it bad. They thus damn the whole of life and conclude that
it is utterly full of evil. 13 Hence the silly view that what we think is life is
death and what we fear will be death is life; the prime good then is not to get
born and the next is to die soon. 14 To improve its credibility the view is
attributed to Silenus. 70 Cicero says in his Consolatio that 'not to be born is
best, not to crash upon these rocks of life; next best, if you do get born, is to
escape as fast as possible from the blaze of misfortune.' 71 His belief in so
stupid a dictum is made plain by the embellishment he adds to it of his own
making. 15 W hose advantage does he think it is, I wonder, not to be born?
There would be absolutely no one to know. The good or bad of something is
a construct of our perception. 16 Second: why did he think the whole of life
is rocks or inferno? As if either we had power not to be born, or else our life
were a gift of luck and not of god, or as if the reason for being alive could
have any similarity to fire.

17 Plato said much the same, where he says 'he thanked nature first that
he was born a human and not a dumb beast, second that he was born a man
and not a woman, <thi rd> that he was born a Greek and not a barbarian, and
lastly that he was born in Athens and in the time of Socrates.’ 72 18 The
degree of mental blindness, the size of error in such ignorance of the truth, is
beyond expression. Let me simply say that nothing more crazy has ever been
said in human history; as if being born a barbarian or a woman or a donkey
would have left him the same Plato and not what he was born as. 19 No
doubt he put his faith in Pythagoras, who tried to prevent peoplefeeding on
animals by saying that souls transferred from their bodies into the bodies of
other animals, which is both stupid and impossible: stupid, because there

70 Cf. Cic.Tusc. 1.114.

71 Cic. Consol, fr. 9 (Vitelli). The ultimate source was doubtless Soph. OC 1224-8.

72 Plu. Mar. 46.1.

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207

was no need to switch old souls into new bodies when the creator who once
madethefirstsoulscould always make new ones, and impossible, becausea
soul of the right pattern can no more change its natural state than fire can
work downwards or make its flames flow sideways like a river. 20 So, a wise
man thought it possible that the soul then in Plato could be put into some
dumb beast and keep its human perceptions, and could understand to its
sorrow that it was burdened with an inappropriate body. 21 H e would have
done better to give thanks for being born clever and teachable, so that he
could be so richly and so liberally educated. 22 What was the benefit of
being born in Athens? There have been lots of people in other states of
outstanding talent and learning who were every onea better man than all the
Athenians. 23 How many thousands of people are we to think were born in
Athens in the time of Socrates who were uneducated and stupid? It is not
walls, or the place a man emerges from the womb in, that make him apt for
wisdom. 24 Why be so pleased to be born in the time of Socrates? Could
Socrates equip his pupils with brains? Did it not occur to Plato that Alcibi-
ades too, and Critias, were regular in attendance upon that same Socrates,
and one of them was his country's bitterest foe and the other the cruellest of
all tyrants? 73

On Socrates: his strengths and weaknesses

2QlLet us now consider what was so great about Socrates himself that a
wise man could fairly give thanks for being born in his time. 2 I do not deny
he was a little more shrewd than the others who thought the nature of things
could be comprehended intellectually, but in my view they were not just
mad, but also wicked, for wanting to set their prying eyes upon the secrets of
heavenly providence.

3 At Rome, and in a number of cities, we know that there are sacred
items which it is thought wrong for men to see. People without licence to
pollute them therefore keep from seeing them, and if by chance, mistake or
accident a man does see them, the impiety is expiated first by punishment of
the man and then by repetition of the ceremony. 4 W hat is one to do to these
people who want to gaze on what is forbidden? Those who seek to profane
the secrets of the world and this celestial temple with their impious investi¬
gations are much more wicked for sure than anyone who entered the temple

73 A Icibiades was the maverick Athenian statesman prominent in the last two decades of the
Peloponnesian War. Critias was chief of the Thirty Tyrants, who were permitted by Sparta to
rule A thens after her defeat in 404.

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of Vesta or Bona Dea or Ceres. Those shrines may be unapproachable by
men, but they werebuiltby men. 5These people, however, are not just evading
a charge of impiety; they are after something which is much less respectable,
a reputation for eloquence and a great name for cleverness. 6 What if they
had the power to investigate anything? They are as stupid in professing to as
they are wrong in trying to, si nee they cannot discover anything, and if they
do, they cannot justify it. 7 If they do see the truth, even by chance, which is
not uncommon, they simply arrange for others to dismiss it as false.

Someone does not come down from heaven to deliver a verdict on the
viewsof individuals. 8 No one should haveany doubt aboutthe stupidity, the
ineptitude and the insanity of people who pursue such questions. 9 Socrates
thus had a fair measure of common sense: when he realised there was no
discovery to made in the field, he withdrew from investigation of that sort. I
regret it was the only sort. There is much he did not just undeserving of praise
but strongly deserving of censure; he was very much a child of his times. 10 I
w i 11 sel ect j ust one i tern for universal approval. H e hel d the f ol I ow i ng say i ng i n
high esteem, 'What is above us is irrelevant to us.' 74 11 Let’s fall to the
ground then, and turn the hands that were given us for doing great works into
feet: let the heaven we are urged to gaze at be irrelevant, and so too the very
light of heaven. Yet the cause of our sustenance is in heaven. 12 If Socrates
saw thatdiscussion of things in heaven was noton, hestill couldn'tgrasp the
system in what was at his feet. Well? Was his confusion verbal? Probably
not: surely he understood his own observation, that religion needed no atten¬
tion. If he had said that openly, however, no one would have put up with it.

13 Anyone would see that this world of such wondrous and perfect
formation is governed by some sort of providence, because there is nothing
which can successfully exist without some guide and controller. 14 A house
abandoned by its occupant falls down, a ship without a helmsman comes to
grief, and a body left without a soul disintegrates: we cannot think that a
world as big as ours could have been constructed without an architect, or
could havelasted so long without a ruler. 15 If Socrates meant to destroy his
city’s religious rituals, I don't disapprove and I will even applaud - if he
himself comes up with something better. In his oaths, however, he invoked
the dog and the goose. 75 What a buffoon, as Zeno the Epicurean 76 says of

74 Cf. Min. Fei. 13.1. But Tertullian, nat. 2.4.15, ascribes the saying to Epicurus. It was
proverbial.

75 Variants may be found in Tert. nat. 1.10.42; apol. 14.7; A ug. vera relig. 2.2.

76 ThisZeno came from Sidon. Hetaught Philodemus, and lived c. 155-75 BC. L. derives
his reference from Cic. N.D. 1.93; M in. Fel. 38.5 has Socrates asscurra, buffoon.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

209

him! W hat a silly, sorry fool if he meant to mock religion, and if he meant it
seriously, what a lunatic, to treat an unclean animal as a god! 16 Who would
dare attack the superstitions of Egypt when Socrates has personally endor¬
sed them in Athens? And what about that piece of supreme futility, when
before his death he asked his friends to sacrifice a cock he had promised to
Aesculapius? 77 17 Obviously he was scared Asclepius would haul him up
before Rhadamanthus the assessor for non-performance. 78 If he had died in
consequence of a disease, I would reckon he died insane. But si nee he acted
in full health, anyone who thinks him wise is mad himself. And that’s the
man in whose time a wise man should be glad to be born!

Plato's warped view of fairness

2LlLet us consider instead what Plato learnt off Socrates. After his rejec¬
tion of scientific inquiry, Socrates concentrated on investigating virtue and
duty. Doubtless therefore, he enlightened his listeners with his advice on
justice. 2 U nder Socrates’ tuition, Plato surely saw that the power of justice
consists in fairness, since all men are born on the same terms. 'Let them
therefore have nothing private of their own,' hesaysjRep. 416d], 'and so that
equality is possible, which justice logically requires, let them have every¬
thing in common.' 3 That is tolerable as long as it is clear that the topic is
money. How i mpossi bl e it actual ly isand how unfair, I could demonstratein
many ways, but let us allow its possibility: everyone is going to be wise and
despise money. 79 4 So where does this idea of 'in common' take him?
'M arriages,’ he says [457c], 'will also need to be collective.' Presumably he
means lots of men flocking round the same woman like dogs, and the one
with the most strength winning her; alternatively, if they are patient men,
like philosophers, they can wait, and take their turn like men in a brothel.

5 What a remarkable notion of fairness Plato has! Where is the virtue of
chastity? Where is conjugal fidelity? Take them away, and all justice is gone!

6 Y et PI ato also said [473d] that'cities would bein blissif either philosophers

77 These were Socrates' last words, as recorded by Plato (Phd. 118). Cf. Tert. apol. 46.5;
nat. 1.6, 2.2.12.

78 At 7.22.5, L. links Rhadamanthus with M inos and Aeacus in giving judgement in the
underworld. Plato adds Triptolemus (Grg. 524a); Vergil omits Aeacus (A. 6.540). Tertullian
mocks pagans for imagining (following Plato and the poets) that they would be judged at the
tribunal of Rhadamanthus or M inos, rather than by Christ. See apol. 23.13; nat. 1.19.5; sped.
30.4.

79 For L. on private property, see pp. 38-40.

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became kings or kings turned philosopher.' Would you give kingship to a
man so just and fair, a man who would have taken away people's property
and bestowed it on others, and would have prostituted the women? Never
mind any king, no tyrant ever did that!

7 Whatgroundsdid he offerfor this disgusting advice? 'The community
will be harmonious,' he says [463c], 'and tightly bonded in mutual affection,
if everyone is husband, father, wife and child of everyone.' 8 W hat a mish¬
mash of humanity! How can love survive where there is no certainty who to
love? What husband will love his wife or wife her husband unless they have
always lived as one, unless deliberate devotion and steadfast exchange of
loyalty have produced a mutuality of love? That is a virtuefor which Plato’s
promiscuous pleasuring allows no room. 9 So too, if everyone is a child of
everyone, who will love children as they would their own children when
they either do not know or else are not sure that they are their own? Who will
honour his father, as it might be, when he does not know whose son he is
himself? The result is not just that he treats some outsider as his father: he
may also treat his father as some outsider. 10 What about the fact that a wife
can be in common but a son cannot? Any child's conception is necessarily
unique: the child is uniquely incompetent to be a common property; nature
itself objects. 11 All that Plato is left with is communality of wives for the
sake of harmony. But there is no fiercer cause of quarrels than pursuit of one
femaleby a host of males. 12 If Plato couldn’tgettheadvicefrom reason, he
could certainly have had it from the example not only of dumb animals,
whose bitterest battles are so caused, but also of human beings, who have
always fought their worst wars with each other for that reason.

Critique of Plato (continued)

ZZICommunality of that sort simply produces adultery and lust, and to get
those out by the roots you need virtue most of all. 2 Plato didn't find the
harmony he sought because he didn’t see where it comes from. J ustice has
no impact if it is way off centre, or lodged in the body even; it operates
entirely in man’s mind. 3 Anyone wanting equality among mankind should
remove not marriage and property but arrogance, pride and conceit, so that
your men of power, the big ones, realise they are equal with the poorest. 4 If
the rich lose their haughtiness and intolerance, it won't matter whether some
are rich and others poor, because their souls will beat par, and the only thing
capable of achieving that is the worship of God.

5 Plato thought he had found justice when he was simply overthrowing

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

211

it: it is minds that need to be in common, not breakable things. If justice is
mother of all the virtues, then whenever a single virtue is removed, justice
itself is undone. 6 Plato removed thrift first of all, which simply doesn’texist
when there is nothing of one’s own; he removed self-restraint since there
was nothing of anyone else's to keep from; he removed self-control and
chastity, which are the greatest sexual virtues on either side; he removed
modesty, shame and deference - if, that is, right and proper begin to be the
words for what is usually seen as scandalous and shameful. 7 He wanted to
bestow virtue all round, and he took it away all round. Both vice and virtue
take shape from private ownership of things; common ownership simply
gives licence to vice. 8 M en owning lots of women can only be called self-
indulgent prodigals. So too, women owned by lots of men are not exactly
adulteresses, si nee marriage does not apply, but they are certainly prostitutes
and harlots. 9 Plato has thus reduced the life of man to something like that
not of dumb things, but of beasts and cattle. Virtually all birds form unions
and stay paired, defending their nests with one accord like marriage beds,
and loving their offspring because their parentage is sure; if you foist others
on them, they turf them out. 10 And yet Plato in all his wisdom, rejecting
both human custom and nature, chose rather stupid examples to follow:
seeing that in the other animals the duties of male and female are not distinct,
he concluded that women should also take on soldiering, be concerned in
political debate and exercise office both civil and military. So he assigned
them weapons and horses. The consequence is wool and spindles for men,
and the bearing of children! 11 He did not seethe impossibility of his ideas;
there simply has never yet been a nation on earth either so stupid or so wise
as to live like that.

Some bizarre beliefs of philosophers

23.1 When the leading lights of philosophy can be caught out in such
silliness, what shall wethink of the lesser ones? Contempt for money is what
usually gives them their noisy self-esteem as wise. 'The spirit is strong.' I
keep my eye on what they do, on where the contempt for money takes them.
2 Parental inheritance they reject and shun as an evil: to avoid shipwreck in
a storm they venture boldly out in calm conditions, their bravery coming not
of courage but of a perverse fear, like the people who kill themselves rather
than be killed by the enemy, avoiding death by death! 3 They could have
acquired a great name for liberality, but they throw the means away, earning
neither distinction nor gratitude. 4 Democritus is praised for abandoning his

212

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

fields and letting them become public pasture. If he had made a gift of them,
fine: butthereisno wisdom in an act which if done universally is useless and
bad. 5 Even so, that carelessness is tolerable compared with turning one's
inheritance into cash and chucking it in the sea. I wonder whether such a
man is sane or mad. 'Begone to the depths,’ he said, 'you evil desires; I shall
drown you to prevent being drowned by you myself.’ 6 If your contemptfor
money is so great, turn it to good, put it to humane use, give to the poor: what
you propose to throw away you can use to help a great host of people not to
die of hunger, thirst or nakedness. 7 At least copy Tuditanus’ mad frenzy:
scatter it for the people to grab. 80 Then you can be free of it and yet bestow
it well: anything that helps so many is a good thing.

8 Zeno’s idea of the parity of faults is also unacceptable. 81 Let us omit,
however, what has always excited universal derision, and prove the lunatic's
confusion well enough by reference to hisclassing of pity between vice and
disease. 82 He thus deprives us of the emotion which embraces almost all
human life. 9 Human beings are naturally weaker than the rest of the animals,
animals being equipped by heavenly providence with natural safeguards for
withstanding the elements or fending off physical attacks, whereas man has
none of them: in their place he has the emotion of pity, more simply called
humanity, forourmutual protection of each other. 10 If man went mad at the
sight of another man, which we see happen in animals of a solitary nature,
there would be no society of men, no interest in founding cities and no
reason to either, and so life itself would not be safe, since man would be
exposed in all his weakness to the other animals, and would also attack his
own fellow men as the wild beasts do.

11 Other phi losophers are just as crazy. What can be said of theonewho
claimed snow was black? The consequence of that was the claim that pitch
was white! This is the philosopher who said he was born in order to see the
sky and the sun, though he saw nothing at all on earth, even in broad

80 This man appears to be C. SemproniusTuditanus, consul of 129 BC, and the context is
the distribution of land to colonists under the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus of 133/2. L.
seems to have misunderstood Tuditanus’ role, for by refusing the senate's request to adjudicate
between the agrarian commission and Italian allies who stood to lose by its work, he was
holding up rather than promoting the distribution of land. SeeAppian, B.C. 1.18.

81 Stoics believed that there were no degrees of virtue or vice. See D.L. 7.127; cf. Plutarch,
On Common Perceptions (M or. 1063 A-B): the man underwater one arm's length down and the
man 500 fathoms down are equally drowning.

82 Pity is classifiable under the passion of distress (cf. Stobaeus 2.90.19-91.9 = LS I,
p412E). The central place of pity in L.'s Christian vision is given a full discussion in 6.10-16.

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213

daylight. 83 12 Xenophanes 84 very foolishly believed mathematicians who said
that the moon’s orb was eighteen times larger than the earth's; in keeping
with his silliness there he said there was another earth within the hollow
curve of the moon, and another race of men lived on it in the same way that
we live on this earth. 13 That gives those loony folk a second moon to shed
nocturnal light upon them as ours does on us, and perhaps this earth of ours
is moon to another earth below. 14 'A mong the Stoics,' says Seneca, 'there
was one who considered attributing a population to the sun.’ 85 Patently, a
silly consideration. What would hebelosing if he had made the attribution?
The heat put him off, I believe. He was afraid to put such a multitude in peril,
in case the great disaster of their death in such heat might come to be blamed
on him.

On the Antipodes

241Well now: when philosophers opine thereare people beneath our feet in
the antipodes, are they talking sense? 86 Is anyone so silly as to believe there
are people whose feet are above their heads? Or that things on the ground
with us hang the other way there, and crops and trees grow downwards, and
rain, snow and hail fall upwards to the ground? No wonder the Hanging
Gardens are counted among the seven wonders of the world when philo¬
sophers produce hanging fields, cities, seas and mountains! We must expose
the origin of this confusion too. 2 They always get confused the same way.
They pick up as a first premise something wrong which looks right, and then
proceed to its consequences necessarily. Thus they tumble into lots of
ludicrous stuff, because anything in agreement with what’s in error is bound
to be in error itself. 3 Once they trust a premise, they don't examine the
nature of what follows; they just defend it every way, though they ought to
be judging the truth or falsehood of their premises from the consequences.

4 So what persuaded them to think of antipodean people? They could see
the stars in their courses travelling to their settings, and the sun and moon
always setting in the same direction and rising from the same place, 5 but
si nee they couldn't see what mechanism controlled their courses or how they
returned from setting to rising, and they thought that the sky itself sloped

83 See 9.4ff. above.

84 Cf. Cic.Ac. 2.82 (18 times larger); 123 (moon inhabited, saysX enophanes). Xenophanes
of Colophon was a poet and philosopher of the late 6th cent. BC.

85 Sen. F76,194 (Vottero).

86 L.’s critique was picked up by Augustine: see civ. 16.9.

214

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

down in all directions, which it is bound to appear to do given its huge
breadth, they considered the world to be round like a ball, and from the
movement of thestarsthey concluded that the sky revolved; the stars and sun
upon setting were thus brought back to their startpoint simply by the revolu¬
tion of the world. 6 They then built spheres in the air after the model of the
world, and engraved them with fantastic devices which they said were the
stars. 7 The consequence of this sphericity of the sky was that the earth was
shut in at the heart of it, and if that were so, then the earth itself was like a
sphere: anything enclosed by something spherical was bound to be spherical
itself. 8 B ut if the earth were round, then it would have to present the same
appearance to all quarters of the sky, rearing up mountains, laying out plains
and flattening oceans on all sides. And if that were so, the ultimate conse¬
quence was that no part of the earth would go uninhabited by men and the
other animals. Thus those pendent antipodeans were the final inference of
the roundness of the sky. 9 If you were to ask the people who defend these
fantasies how everything avoids tumbling into the bottom of the sky, they
reply that it is the nature of things for weight to be drawn to the centre, and
for everything to be centrally bound, like the spokes of a wheel, while light
things, like cloud, smoke and fire, are diffused from the centre to seek the sky.

10 I don't know what to say about them; they make that initial mistake,
and then they stick faithfully to their folly, defending nonsense with
nonsense, though I sometimes think they are either philosophising for fun or
else knowingly and wittingly taking up the defence of untruth to practise and
display their talents on rubbish. 11 I could prove the impossibility of sky
being under the earth with plenty of arguments, except for needing to bring
this book to its end and still having some things to say more immediately
necessary. Since it is not the task of a single book to deal with the mistakes
of individual philosophers, enumeration of afew mistakes should be enough
from which to understand the nature of the rest.

If philosophy is for an elite, it is not wisdom

25^11 must now say a word or two about philosophy in general, in order to
end with my case well made. Our friend the great imitator of Plato thought
that philosophy was not for ordinary people because only educated people
could attain it. 2 'Philosophy,' he says [Tusc. 2.4], 'is well content to have
few critics; it deliberately eschews the masses.’ If philosophy abhors a crowd,
it is not wisdom, because if wisdom is granted to man then it is granted to all
men without distinction, so that there is simply no one who cannot acquire it.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

215

3 Philosophers welcome virtue, a gift to the human race, in such a way that
they apparently want to be the only ones in enjoyment of a public good. Such
jealousy! As if they wanted to put blinds over everyone else's eyes, or even
to put their eyes out, to prevent them seeing the sun! 4 Denying men wisdom
is simply depriving men’s minds of the true light of God. 5 If man is natur¬
ally competent to be wise, then wisdom ought to be teachable to craftsmen,
peasants and women, indeed, to all of human shape, and the population of
the wise should be a mix of every tongue, condition, sex and age.

6 The best proof that philosophy neither leads to wisdom nor is wisdom
is the celebration of its secret by beard and gown alone. 7 The Stoics realised
as much; they said philosophy was both for slaves and for women; 87 so did
Epicurus, who invites people of no education at all to philosophy; so did
Plato, who wanted to build his community from the wise. 8 They tried to do
what truth required, but could not get beyond the wording, 9 firstly because
many skills are needed for the attainment of philosophy to be possible.
There are the standard letters of the alphabet to learn, to enable reading,
because the great variety of topics prevents all details being learnt by
listening or by rote. 10 M uch time has to be spent with the language teachers
too, to learn the right patterns of utterance, and that is bound to take up years.
11 Even rhetoric cannot be omitted, for the projection and enunciation of
what has been learnt. Geometry, music and astrology are also needed: these
are all skills associated with philosophy. 12 It is all quite beyond a woman's
capacity, because in her adolescent years she must learn the tasks soon to
serve her in housekeeping; it is also beyond slaves, because all the years in
which they could be learning are entirely devoted to service; and it is also
beyond the poor, craftsmen or peasants, as they have to spend each day
working for their food. That is why Cicero said that philosophy abhors a
crowd. 88 13 Oh, but Epicurus will accept the uneducated. 89 Then how will
they understand his stuff about atoms, which is cryptic and intricate, and
scarcely intelligible even to educated folk? 14 What room is there for the
non-expert, the innocent, on matters so wrapped in obscurity, so compli¬
cated by different minds at work, and so thick with the rhetoric of fine
talkers? 15 As for women, there isn't one in the whole record whom the
Epicureans ever taught to phi losophize except Themiste, 90 and among slaves

87 The Stoic M usonius Rufus (c. 30-100) wrote a treatise 'that women too should study
philosophy'. See Lutz (1947), 38-43.

88 Tusc. 2.4; see 2 above.

89 For this, and for 4-5 above, cf. Epic. fr. 227a (p. 171,19 Usener).

90 See D.L. 10.5 (Epicurus taught her himself, and wrote her letters); cf.Cic. Pis. 63; Fin. 2.68.

216

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

there is only Phaedo, educated, it is said, after being bought out of evil
slavery. 91 16 They try to count Plato and Diogenes, but they were not slaves:
they came into slavery by capture, and Plato at least is said to have been
bought out of it by a certain A nniceris, for eight sesterces. 92 Seneca made a
ferocious attack on the buyer for rating Plato so cheap; 17 I think he was
enraged out of anger with thefellow for not wasting loads of money, as if he
should have been paying a H ector’s ransom of gold, or heaping up coins way
beyond the seller’s demand. 18 A mong barbarians there is only A nacharsis
the Scythian, 93 who would never have dreamt of philosophy had he not
already learnt language and literature.

Wisdom comes from G od

261The philosophers realised under pressure from nature what had to be
done, but they could not do it themselves and they did not see it could not be
done by philosophers: the only thing that can do it is the teaching of heaven,
for that alone is wisdom. 2 Can people who fail even to persuade themselves
of something manage to persuade anyone? Alternatively, will philosophers
suppress desires, cool wrath or control lust in anyone when they surrender to
vice themselves and admit that natural forces are superior? 3 Because the
precepts of God are true and simple, their power in the souls of men is clear
from daily experience. 4 Give me a man who is wrathful, bad-mouthed and
uncontrolled: with a few words of God 'I will make him as quiet as a
sheep.' 94 5 Give me someone greedy, mean and grasping: I will return himto
you generous and distributing great handfuls of his own coin. 6 Give me
someone scared of pain and death: in no time at all hewill despise the cross,
the fire and Peri 11 us' bull. 95 7 Givemea debauchee, an adulterer, a glutton:
soon you will see him sober, chaste and continent. 8 Give me someone cruel
and hungry for blood: soon hisfrenzy will changeinto merest kindness. 9 Give
me someone unfair, stupid and sinful, and at once he will be fair, sensible
and innocent: all his wickedness will be drained out in one washing.

10 The power of divine wisdom is so great that when it has steeped a

91 He associated with Socrates and founded a philosophical school at Elis.

92 See Sen. F85, 200 (Vottero). For Plato, see D.L. 3.20, and 2 4.26n above; A nniceris was
a philosopher of the Cyrenai c school; for Diogenes the Cynic, see D.L, 9.20; cf. Epict. 4.1.114.

93 A largely legendary figure, exemplifying the wise barbarian. See Hdt. 4.76, and Hartog
(1988), 61-84.

94 Ter. Ad. 534.

95 Perillusdesigned Phalaris’ bull. SeeV. Max. 9.2.ext.9; Pliny, Nat. 34.89.

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

217

man’s heart it can drive out stupi dity the mother of cri me i n one si ngle surge,
and to achieve that there is no need of payment or books or study in the small
hours. 11 it happens for free, with ease and at speed, provided one's ears are
open and one's heart is athirst for wisdom. No one need be afraid: we are not
selling water or offering the sun for a fee. The fountain of God issupremely
rich and full, and is available to all; the light of heaven we see rises for all
who have eyes. 12 Has any philosopher ever provided that? If he wanted to,
can he? They waste the days of their life in pursuit of philosophy, but if
nature is at all resistant, they cannot improve anyone, not even themselves.
The greatest achievement of their wisdom is not to cut out vice but merely to
cover it up. 13 A few words from God change a man so entirely, stripping off
theold and remaking him new, that you would not know him for the same. 96

Philosophers may come close to the truth, but lack authority

27.1Well? Don't the philosophers give like advice? Yes, in plenty, and they
often get near the truth, but their advice has no weight because it is merely
human and lacks a greater - that is, a divine - authority. 2 Hence no one
believes it, because the listener thinks he is as much of a man as the giver is.
3 In addition, philosophers' advice has no certitude since nothing is said
from knowledge; since it is all based on conjecture and much of it diverges,
only an utter fool would willingly obey advice whose soundness or error is
doubtful. No one obeys it because no one willingly puts in hard work for no
clear end.

4 The Stoics say that only virtue produces a life of bliss. Nothing can be
truer. Imagine someone on a cross, however, or being tortured: can anyone
be in bliss in the midst of his executioners? Yes: pain applied to the body is
thevery stuff of virtue; even in torment there is no misery. 5 Epicurus puts it
much more bravely: 'A wiseman isalwaysin bliss, and even when caughtin
Phalaris' bull he'll cry, It’s lovely; I don’t mind it at all!' 97 That’s asking for
mockery, especially since it’s our man of pleasure who has adopted the role
of hero for himself and gone right over the top. No one could possibly think
that the torture of his body was a pleasure. The duty of virtue is quite
adequately met by mere endurance. 6 W hat do you Stoics say, and you too,
Epicurus? 'Thewiseman isin bliss even when under torture.' If he’sin bliss

96 Cf. Eph. 4:22ffTert. resurr. 45.

97 For this saying, seeCic.Tusc. 2.17; cf. 5.31, 75. In the foil owing sections, L. isfollowing
the same source; seeTusc. 2.18; 5.73ff., 88. In L.’s version only the key words are the same. See
Epic, ad fr. 601 (p. 339, 8 Usener).

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from pride in his endurance, he’ll have no joy of that: under torture he may
die. If he’s in bliss from thinking of future fame, either he won’t know of it
(if souls perish), or if he does, he'll gain nothing from it. 7 So what other
benefit of virtue is there, or what bliss in one’s lifetime? 'Let a man die
calm,' they say. You offer me a good which lasts an hour, or perhaps a
minute, and there would be no point in a whole life spent in toil and misery
for that. 8 How long does death take? When it comes, whether you endure it
calmly or not is by then of no importance at all. There is thus nothing to be
got from virtue except glory, 9 but glory is either brief and superfluous or,
popular opinion being perverse, non-existent. Where virtue is mortal and
fleeting, it has no fruits. 10 People who claimed that it did were seeing a
shadow of virtue, and not the thing itself. They were head down to the
ground, and didn’t raise their gaze on high to see the virtue which 'displayed
itself across the heavens.' 98 11 This is the reason why nobody heeds philo¬
sophers’ advice: if they defend pleasure they are training us up for vice; if
they promote virtue, they put no penalty on sin except the penalty of its mere
nastiness, and they promise no prizeforvirtueexceptgood repute and praise
alone, since they say that virtue is only to be pursued for its own sake.

12 The wise man under torture is therefore in bliss; when he is being
tortured forhisfaith, orforjustice, orGod, it is that endurance of pain which
puts him in perfect bliss. 13 Only God can honour virtue: the reward of
virtue is immortality alone. The power of virtue is all unknown to those who
do not seek it or who have no religion, which is the link with eternal life:
they do not know the reward of it and they are not focussed on heaven,
though they think that in tracking the untrackable they are, because the
whole point of contemplating heaven is either adoption of religion or belief
in the immortality of one's soul. 14 Anyone who either understands that God
is to be worshipped or keeps the hope of immortality set before him has his
mind on heaven: he may not see it with his eyes, but he does see it with the
light of his soul. 15 Those who do not adopt religion are earthbound,
because religion is from heaven, and those who think the soul dies with the
body are equally focussed on earth because they see nothing beyond the
body, which is earth - nothing, that is, which might be immortal. 16 It is
therefore no use for man to be so created that he can gaze at the sky erect
unless he gazes at God with mind erect too and has all his thinking fixed on
the hope of perpetual life.

98 Lucr. 1.64.

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219

Philosophy has missed wisdom, rejected truth and promoted luck

2&lThe only basis of reason in life, and the only ground of our being, is
recognition of the God who made us, and a true and religious worship of
him. Because the philosophers missed it, so they were not wise. 2 Wisdom
was what they sought, but they did not search for it rightly, and so their
failure was the greater; they got into such confusion that they even failed to
keep hold of ordinary wisdom. 3 They did not just refuse to promote religion;
they actually abolished it. Beguiled by the appearance of a bogus virtue, they
tried to release men's minds from all fear. This overthrow of religion has
earned the label 'natural'. 4 Either they did not know by whom the world
was made, or they wanted to convince people that no divine intelligence had
been at work on it; hence their statement that nature is mother of all things,
as if to say that everything comes into being spontaneously. They admit their
folly in that one word. Without a divine providence and power, nature simply
fails to exist. 5 If by nature they mean god, it is merely perverse to use that
word instead of god; if on the other hand nature means the reason or neces¬
sity or condition of coming into being, then since it has no senses of itself, a
divine mind must exist to give all things their start in life through its
providence. If, again, nature is sky and earth and all that has ever been created,
nature is not god but the work of god.

6 It is much the same mistake which makes them think of luck as a sort
of god who mocks humanity with a variety of accidents. They do not know
where their good and evil come from; 7 they think they are paired with luck
in afight, but they offer no analysisof the agent or the cause of the pairing,
and simply boast at every moment that their duel is with luck. 8 Anyone
offering consolation to another at the death or loss of dear ones lashes the
name of luck with the most ferocious invective; in fact, there is no discussion
of virtue at all on their part in which luck doesn't get hammered. 9 In his
Consolatio Cicero says that he always fought against luck, and always had
her beaten when he was brave and stood up to his enemies’ attacks. Even
when driven from home and deprived of his citizenship he was not broken by
her; but when he lost his darling daughter, then (he says, to his shame) he
was the victim of luck. 'I give in,' he says, 'I put my hands up.’ 99 10 How
wretched to lie down like that! He calls his action foolish, and yet he
professes to be wise! So what's the point of using the word? What's the point

99 See Cic. Consol, fr. 3, 3a (Vitelli). The death of Tullia in February 45 BC dominated
C icero’s letters to A tticus between M arch and August (Att. 12.13ff.). H is pi an for a shrine in her
memory (Att. 12.18 et al.) was eventually abandoned.

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of all that superiority, so eloquently expressed? Why present yourselves so
differently dressed from the rest? Or more simply, why do you offer advice
on wisdom if no one has yet been found who is wise? Philosophers admit
themselves that they know nothing and aren’t wise: how can they carp at us
for saying so too?

11 Only if their failings get so great that they cannot even pretend to
wisdom (which they do in all other cases) are they eventually alerted to their
ignorance; then they jump about like lunatics, proclaiming their blindness
and stupidity. 12 100 Anaxagoras says that everything is shrouded in darkness;
Empedocles laments the narrowness of the paths of perception as if he
needed a four-wheeled carriage or a four-horse chariot in order to think;
13 Democritus thinks that truth lies sunk down a well-shaft so deep that it
has no bottom, which is as stupid as the rest of his stuff, of course. 14 Truth
is not sunk in a well which he could climb down, or even fall into: imagine
it on the topmost tip of a lofty mountain, or, better, in the sky, which is
absolutely true. 15 W hy should he go saying it is down at the lowest level
rather than raised on high? - unless he’d rather lodge his own mind in his
feet perhaps, or in the soles of his shoes, rather than in heart or head. 16 They
were so very far from the truth that even their own body posture failed to warn
them to look for truth on high. 17 This is the desperate context for Socrates'
famous claim, when he said he knew nothing except for the one thing that he
knew nothing, and that was the source of theAcademy’s teaching, if teach¬
ing is what to call it when only ignorance is taught and learnt. 18 Even the
ones who claimed knowledge for themselves could not consistently argue
the case for what they thought they knew, 19 and because their ignorance of
things divine barred their theories from making sense, they were so diverse
and imprecise, and often so at odds with themselves in their arguments, that
what they taught and meant you simply couldn't sort out and decide.

20 So why fight with people who perish on their own swords? Why
labour to overthrow people who are overthrown and brought low by their
own utterance? 'Aristotle,' says Cicero [Tusc. 3.69], 'in attacking previous
philosophers says that they were either very stupid or else very arrogant in
thinking that philosophy was brought to perfection by their talents, whereas
he could see that philosophy would soon be made perfect given its great and
speedy improvement recently.’ 21 So what did he mean by 'soon'? When
was philosophy perfected, and by whom? In saying they were very stupid in
thinking wisdom had been brought to perfection by their talents he was

100 For the following sections, cf. Cic. Ac. 1.44-45.

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221

right, but even Aristotle was incautious in thinking that what had been begun
by his predecessors or had been improved recently would be perfected inthe
next generation. 22Therecan be no investigation where the search ison the
wrong track.

L uck is nothing, evil a reality which tests the virtuous

2aiLet us go back to what we left out. Luck by itself is nothing, and we
must not think of it existing perceptibly at all, as it is simply the sudden and
unexpected outcome of things contingent. 2 Philosophers, however, are
willing to be wise on a silly point (in case they fail to go wrong eventually):
they change its gender, and say it is not a goddess (the popular view) but a
god. 3 But they also call it sometimes nature and sometimes luck, 'because,'
as C icero says [Ac. 1.29],' it causes much to happen that we do not expect,
thanks to the obscurity of the causation and our ignorance of it.’ Since they
do not know why things happen, they are bound not to know who makes
them happen.

4 In a very serious work in which he drew on philosophy to give his son
advice about life, Cicero also says [Off. 2.19], 'The great power of luck in
either direction is well known. When its wind blows fair and we take our
chance, we reach our desired results, and when it blows against us, we are
shipwrecked.’ 5 First: he speaks as though the item were one of both personal
and general knowledge, despite denying that anything can be known.
Second, despite his efforts to cast doubt even on things that are obvious, he
thinks clear something which he ought to treat as extremely doubtful: to a
wise man it is utterly false. 6 'It is well known,’ he says. Not to me. Let him
tell me if he can what that power is of blowing this way and blowing that
way. it is disgraceful of a clever man to assert something which he cannot
prove if challenged.

7 Finally, though he says that 'we must withhold assent, because it is
folly to agree to things unknown too soon', 101 he has obviously put his faith
in ideas of the ignorant mob, who think that good and evil are bestowed on
mankind by luck. They give her icon a horn of plenty and a steering oar, as
if she bestows prosperity and has control of human affairs. 8 Even Vergil
agrees with that, calling luck 'omnipotent' [A. 8.33], and so does the historian
[Sal. Cat. 8.1] who says'Assuredly, luck isthedominantfactorin all things.’
9 What space does that leave for the rest of the gods? Why is luck not said to

101 Cf. Cic.Ac. 1.45; N.D. 1.1.1.

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rule if luck has superior power? Alternatively, why is luck not worshipped
alone if luck has all the power? Or if it is only evil she bestows, let them
produce some reason why, if she is a goddess, she is so ill-disposed towards
men and wants them ruined, despite their faithful worship of her, why she is
fair to bad men and unfair to good men, why she lurks in ambush to wreck,
deceive and destroy, 10 who made her the perpetual tormentor of the human
race, and why, finally, she controls a power so evil that 'she brings all things
in and out of fame according to whim rather than truth.' [Sal. Cat. 8.1] 11
Those are the questions I say philosophers should be asking, rather than
make intemperate attacks on luck which is innocent. Even if luck did exist in
someform, they can offer no reason for it being as hostileto mankind as it is
thought to be.

12 AII those speeches in which they lash the unfairness of luck and make
such proud boast of their own virtues in opposing it are simply the ravings of
ill-considered triviality. 13 They need not be jealous of us who have god’s
revelation of the truth: we know that luck is nothing, and likewise we know
that there is an evil and treacherous spirit which is hostileto good men and
is the enemy of justice; it does the opposite of God, and we have given the
explanation of its jealous temper in book 2.14 It lays its traps for everyone.
Those who do not know God stumble in confusion and stagger in folly,
surrounded by darkness, so that none may come to knowledge of the name
of God in whom alone wisdom and life perpetual are contained. 15 Those
who do know God, on the other hand, are assailed with clever deceptions, to
enmesh them in desire and lust, to deprave them with beguiling sins, and to
drive them towards death; if deception will not do the work, their overthrow
is attempted by force and violence. 16 The first steps in transgression do not
thrust a man away from God and into punishment immediately: the purpose
of evil is to test a man for virtue, because if his virtue is not stirred and
strengthened by constant assault it cannot come to perfection; virtue is the
brave and indomitableenduranceof evils that have to be endured. Hence the
fact that virtue cannot exist if it has no adversary. 17 So when they perceived
that the energy of this perverse power was in conflict with virtue and they
did not know its name, they invented for themselves the empty word luck;
how far that word is from wisdom is clear in these verses of Juvenal
[10.365-66]: 'You have, or should have, no power, if providence existed. It
is we who make a goddess of you, luck, and we who set you in the sky.' 18
The words 'nature' and 'luck' were thus brought in by folly, error and
blindness, and, as Cicero says, by ignorance of things and their causes. 19
Philosophers do not know the adversary; by the same token they do not even

BOOK 3: FALSE WISDOM

223

know virtue, knowledge of which is derived from knowledge of the adver¬
sary. If virtue is linked with wisdom or if it is itself wisdom, as they say
themselves, then they are bound not to know where it is. 20 No one can be
equipped with true weapons if he does not know the foe he is to be equipped
to fight, and no one can conquer an adversary who strikes at a shadow in the
fighting and not at his true foe. If a fighter is looking elsewhere and fails to
see in time the blow launched at his vitals or to guard against it, he will fall
prostrate.

Philosophy is false wisdom: abandon it

30l1I have explained as far as my average ability can manage that the path
taken by the philosophers is very far from the truth; I know how much,
however, I have left out in not engaging in the argument they deserved. 2 But
thediversion was one which had to be made, in order to show how many fine
philosophical talents have been wasted on bogus stuff, in case anyone cut off
from worthless cults might think of turning to them to find something
reliable. 3 For men there is one hope and one salvation, to be found in the
teaching we argue for; all human wisdom rests in the requirement to know
God and worship him. That is our doctrine, and that is our judgment.

4 As loudly as I can, therefore, I pronounce, proclaim and bear witness:
this is the thing which all the philosophers looked for all their lives and yet
never could find, grasp or hold, because they either maintained a false
religion orabolished religion entirely. 5 Away with them, therefore, all those
philosophers who bring no system to human life but merely confound it.
Whom can they teach? Who can learn off them? They have not learnt off
themselves yet. Whom can a sick man heal? Whom can a blind man guide?
All who mind about wisdom must rally to the call, 6 or we shall be waiting
until Socrates knows something, or Anaxagoras finds light in his darkness,
or Democritus hauls up truth from its well, or Empedocles widens the paths
of his mind, or Arcesilaus and Carneades 102 can see, think and understand.
7 Behold, a voice from heaven, teaching truth and showing us a light brighter
than the sun itself! Why are we so hard on ourselves? W hy do we hesitate to
take up the wisdom which learned men have wasted all their lives in seeking
and have never been ableto find? 8 Let anyone who wishes to bewiseand in

102 Carneades (c. 214/3-129/8 BC) was head of the new Academy in the mid-2nd century.
Sent by the Athenians, together with the Stoic Diogenes and the Peripatetic Critolaus, on a
mission to Rome c. 155, he stunned his audience by arguing for justice and against justice on
successive days. See 5.16.2ff.

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bliss hear the word of God and learn justice; let him know the mystery of his
birth, despise things human and take up things divine, so that he may achieve
that supreme good for which he was born.

9 When all religions have been undone and everything that used to be
said or could be said in their defence has been refuted, and when the
teachings of philosophy have been disproved, then we must come to true
religion and wisdom. The two are bound together, as I shall explain, so that
we can support wisdom with proofs, examples and satisfactory evidence
while we show that stupidity, a charge which those worshippers of gods
never cease to fling at us, is entirely in their province and not in ours at all.
10 I have demonstrated where truth lies both in the previous books, where I
was proving the falseness of religions, and in this, where I was getting rid of
false wisdom; the next book will demonstrate more clearly, however, what
true religion and true wisdom are.

BOOK 4 TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION 1

Birth of paganism

LI When I consider the previous state of the human race, 0 emperor
Constantine, and turn it over in my mind as often as I do, it usually seems to
me as remarkable as it is disgraceful that one generation 2 in its folly could
adopt a variety of religions, believing that there were many gods, and
suddenly plunge into such ignorance of its own self that once truth was out
of sight, neither worship of the true God nor an understanding of humanity
could be sustained, as people sought the supreme God notin heaven but on
earth. 2 That, no doubt, is why the happiness of earlier generations is gone.
When people had once abandoned God the father and founder of all, they
began to venerate the inanimate creations of their own fingers. What this
wickedness has achieved, or what evil it has produced, is evident from the
event.

3 The supreme good is something blessed and everlasting precisely
because it cannot be seen, touched or understood, and yet people turned
away from it, and away too from the virtues which go with that good, which
are equally immortal, and they fell for these corrupt and feeble gods, and
grew keen for those things which adorn, feed and rejoice only the body; they
thus sought out a perpetual death for themselves, together with the gods and
the goods of the body; for the whole body is liable to death. 4 Worship of that
sortwas followed by injustice and wickedness, aswasinevitable.They leftoff
raising their faces to heaven; instead, people's minds were bent downwards,
and they concentrated on terrestrial religions and terrestrial good. 5 Then
came division in the human race, and cheating, and all manner of wicked¬
ness, because people despised the goods that are eternal and incorruptible,
which ought to be the only ones desired, and preferred things of a short life
in this world; faith in evil grew strong: people preferred bad to good, because
bad was more immediate. 6 So human life, spent by previous generations in
the brightest of light, fell into the grip of shadow and darkness.

1 The theological positions taken up by L. are best pursued with the aid of Loi (1970) and
M onat (1982).

2 The generation that L. has in mind is that of J upiter, as indicated in l.llff; cf. 5.5.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Once wisdom had gone, people then began to claim the title of wise for
themselves, which was an act consistent with the new depravity. 7 When
every one was wise, however, no one was called so: if only a word once so
widespread could regain its proper value, howeverfew itproperly described!
8 Perhaps those few might be able, by their talents or authority or persistent
encouragement, to release people from their vice and error. But wisdom had
collapsed so totally thatfrom their very claim to the title it is plain that none
of those called wise really was wise.

9 And yet, before what is called philosophy was invented, there were
seven, it is said, who for their courage in investigating and debating the
natural world were thefirst of all men to deserve the reputation aswell as the
name of wise. 3 10 What a wretched and disastrous time, when in all the
world there wereonly seven peoplewho could claim the name of man! Only
a wise man can rightly be called a man; 11 yet if all the rest bar them were
fools, even they were not wise, for no one can truly be wise if fools are the
judges. 12 They were so very remote from wisdom that even later, when
learning expanded and there were many great minds ever intent on its
development, it could not be brought to perfection and the truth be grasped.

After the renown of the seven sages, it is extraordinary what an enthus¬
iasm for searching out truth flared up all over Greece. 13 To begin with, the
very word 'wise' seemed to claim too much, and people refused it and called
themselves merely pursuers of wisdom. In doing so, they condemned the
error and folly of those who had claimed the title of wise too readily, and
they also condemned the ignorance in themselves, an ignorance which they
didn't try to deny; 14 for wherever nature set her hand, as it were, against
their understanding, to prevent them from producing any explanation at all
of something, they declared they knew nothing and perceived nothing.
Hence the much greater wisdom attributed to those who saw their own
unwisdom in part compared with those who were sure they were wise.

Wisdom hides behind folly

21 If then those called wise were not wise, and their successors,
unhesitating in confession of their ignorance, were not wise either, it
remains to look for wisdom elsewhere, since it has not been found where it
was sought. 2 There is only one reason for something not being found when
so much time and talent has been spent searching for it so enthusiastically

3 For the Seven Sages, see 1.5.16; cf. Cic. Off. 3.16.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

227

and laboriously: philosophers have looked for it outside its proper territory.
3 Since they have hunted for wisdom everywhere without finding it
anywhere, and since it has to be somewhere, plainly it is best to look for it
where the label of folly appears: 4 this was the veil under which God hid his
treasure of truth and wisdom, so that the secret of his divine work should not
be open to all. 4 I am regularly amazed that Pythagoras and later Plato were
so fired with a passion for pursuing truth that they went as far as the
Egyptians, theM agi and the Persians to learn the religious practices of those
nations (they had a suspicion that wisdom belonged in a religious context)
while thej ews alone received no visit, though they were its only abode of
truth at the time and it was easier to get to them. 5 I think that they were
diverted from the chance to learn the truth by divine providence because it
was not yet right for people of another race than thej ews to get to know the
religion and justice of the true God. 6 God's plan was to send his great leader
from heaven only as the end of time was approaching, so that he could reveal
to other nations what had been taken away from a faithless and ungrateful
people.

This is the topic that I shall now proceed to discuss in this book, once I
have shown that wisdom goes so closely with religion that neither can be
torn from the other.

Vanity of paganism

3.1As I explained in book 1, there is no wisdom in worship of gods not just
because it subordinates a divine being, man, to things earthly and perishable,
but because it contains no discourse which might help in improving one's
behaviour and giving shape to one's life, nor is there any investigation of
truth in it, but simply a system of worship which consists in a physical
performance and not in a service of the mind. 5 2 It is not to be considered a
true religion because it does not educate people or improve them by instruc¬
tion in justice or virtue. So, because philosophy contains no religion, no
ultimate piety, it is not true wisdom. 3 If the godhead which governs this
world sustains the human race with an incredible generosity and cherishes it
with avirtually paternal kindness, itsurely wants thanks and honourin return,
and no pattern of piety can hold good for man if he remains ungrateful for
the benevolence of heaven; that is not the behaviour of a wise man.

4 Cf. I Cor. 1:20-25. The nature of Christian 'folly' is explored in 5.14-18.

5 The message of 3.1-3 is further developed in 5.19.27-34.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

4 Since therefore philosophy and a religion of gods are, as I have said,
different things and far apart, in that those who profess the philosophy are
one thing, offering no access to gods, and champions of the religion are
another, making no pretence to learning, the one is plainly no true wisdom
and the other no true religion. 5 That is why philosophy has not been able to
understand the truth, nor has the rel i gion of gods been able to give the I ogical
account of itself which it lacks. 6 W here, however, wisdom is linked with
religion in an inseparable bond, each is bound to be true, because in worship
we need to exercise intelligence - we must, that is, know what we are to
worship and how - and in exercise of our intelligence we must worship -
that is, we must fulfil what we know in real earnest.

7 Where then is wisdom linked with religion? Where the one God is
worshipped, of course, and all lifeand action is related to one beginning and
one end: then masters of learning and priests of God are one and the same
people. 8 No one should be worried at a philosopher taking up a priesthood
of the gods: it is a frequent event, and a possible one; but when it happens,
philosophy is not united with religion; instead, philosophy will pause amid
the ritual, as will religion when the philosophy is being practised. 9 Religion
is dumb not only because it is a religion of the dumb but because the ritual is
all a matter of hands and fingers, not of heart and tongue, as ours is, which is
the true religion.

10 Religion isthus within wisdom, and wisdom within religion. Wisdom
cannot be separated from religion because wisdom is simply honouring the
true God with worship that is just and holy. 11 The fact that a ritual of many
gods is contrary to nature can be well understood from the following
argument: every god worshipped by mankind is bound in the course of the
due rituals and prayers to be called father, not just as a mark of honour but
logically, because he antedates man and provides life, health and food like a
father. 12 So J upiter is called father by his worshippers, and so are Saturn,
Janus, Bacchus and all the rest of them, which is what Lucilius mocks in his
'Council of theGods’, noting 'how thereisn’toneof uswho isn’t either Best
father of the gods, or father Neptune, or father Liber or Saturn, or father
M ars, J anus or Quirinus: father we get called every one!’ 6

13 B ut if, procreation being a unique act, nature forbids one person to
have many fathers, so it is unnatural and unholy to worship many gods.
14 Worship must be given therefore to the one who alone can truly be named
father; he is bound also to be lord, because he has a power to punish

6 Lucil. 1.24-27 (Warmington) = 16 (Charpin) = 19-22 (M arx).

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

229

matching hispowerto indulge. 15 Heisto be cal led father because he makes
us so many great gifts, and lord because he has the supreme power of reproof
and punishment. Even the reasoning of the civil law shows that a father must
also be a master. 7 Who will be able to bring up sons unless he has a master’s
power over them? 16 A man is properly called 'father of a family’, provided
he has sons; obviously, 'father' includes slaves too because 'of a family’
follows, 8 and 'family' includes sons because 'father' precedes. Hence it is
clear that one and the same person is both father of his slaves and master of
his sons. 9 17 Finally, a son is manumitted I ike a slave, and a slave when freed
takes his master’s name like a son. If, further, a 'father of a family' is so
named in order to clarify the fact that he has a double power, in that as a
father he must be kind and as a master he must control, so a son is also a
slave and a father is also a master. 18 As therefore by the law of nature there
can only be one father, so too there can only be one master. What will a
servant do if a multiplicity of masters gives a diversity of orders?

19 Worship of many gods is therefore contrary both to reason and to
nature, since neither fathers nor lords can be plural and gods are bound to be
entitled lords and fathers. 20 It is thus impossible to keep hold of the truth in
a situation where one and the same person is subject to a multitude of lords
and fathers and his attention is diverted in all directions, wandering this way
and that, 21 and religion can have no stability when it lacks a sure and lasting
home.

22 Worshi p of gods cannot therefore be true i n exactly the same way that
marriage is not the word where one woman has many husbands: she will be
called either whore or adulteress; when modesty, chastity and faith are
missing, there is bound to be a lack of virtue. A religion of gods is thus
indecent and impure as well, because it lacks faith in serving many, and the
devotion intended, being unfocussed and unclear, has no head or derivation.

7 This striking introduction of Roman law in the service of a theological argument (that God
is one) is revealing about L.’s interests and those of his intended audience.

8 The paterfamilias presides over the familia, by which is meant all those under the same
authority and not just those related by blood or marriage.

9 Roman patria potestas was unique (see Gaius Inst. 1.55) for the power conferred on
fathers over their children. Hence the comparison of a son with a slave (as pursued here by L.
for his own purposes) was in principle feasible. L. is technically correct in indicating that sons
too had to be emancipated (by a ritualised sale thrice over) in order to besui iuris, and free from
their father's potestas.

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Wisdom and religion unite in God the father and master

4.1That makes it plain how close the link is between wisdom and religion.
Wisdom looks to sons in demanding love, and religion looks to slaves in
demanding fear. Just as sons should love and honour a father, so slaves
should fear and respect a master. 2 God is one: since he sustains the role of
both father and master, we should love him as sons and fear him as slaves.

Religion thus cannot be severed from wisdom nor wisdom divorced
from religion, because it is one and the same God who should be both
understood, which is the work of wisdom, and honoured, which is the work
of religion. 3 But wisdom goes first and religion follows because knowing
God comes first and worship of him is the consequence. Thus there is a
single force in the two words, despite the apparent diversity: the one belongs
in perception and the other in action; 4 they are like two streams sourced by
one spring: the spring of wisdom and of religion is God, and if these two
streams lose their link with him, they are bound to run dry. Those who don't
know God can be neither wise nor religious.

5 So it is that both philosophers and worshippers of gods are like dis¬
inherited sons or runaway slaves: the sons are not looking for father nor the
slaves for master. 10 And just as disinherited sons cannot win a legacy from
their father nor can runaway slaves win impunity, so philosophers will not
receive a legacy from heaven of immortality - the supreme good, that is,
which is what they are after most of all - nor will worshippers of gods escape
the penalty of everlasting death, which is the verdict of the true lord on those
who flee his power and name. 6 God's status as father and lord was not
known to either group, whether worshippers of gods or people professing
wisdom, that is; either they thought there was no one to be worshipped, or
they endorsed religions that were false, or, despite understanding the power
and potential of a supreme god (like Plato, who says there is only one god
who made the world, 11 and Cicero, who says [Leg. 1.22] that'man was given
a remarkable status by the supreme god who created him'), yet they made
him no offer of the worship that was owed him as supreme father, though it
was both consequent and necessary. 7 T he i mpossi bi I i ty of gods pi ural bei ng
lords and fathers is proved not only by their numbers, as I pointed out above,
but by logic: there is no story of man being created by gods and no discovery
that gods preceded the arrival of man, 8 since it is clear that there were
people on earth before the births of Vulcan, Bacchus, Apollo and Jupiter

10 For bad slaves and sons, see 5.18.12-16; de ira 18.9ff., 20.Iff.

11 Plato, Ti. 28c. Cf. 1.8.In.

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himself, and yet creation of man is not usually attributed to Saturn or to his
father Cael us.

9 But if there is no tradition of man being formed and established from
the start by any of the gods who get worshipped, then none of them can have
the name of father of man, and so not even the name of god. Veneration is
therefore wholly wrong for such as could not create man, and his creation
was beyond them because he could not be created either <by those whom he
pre-existed or> 12 by a multiplicity of them. 10 Thus the one to whom
worship is uniquely due is the one who preceded J upiter and Saturn, and
preceded heaven and earth too. The one who created heaven and earth before
man is necessarily the one who shaped man. 11 Only a creator can properly
be cal led father, and only a ruler, one who has a true and lasting power of life
and death, can properly be named lord; anyone who does not worship him is
both a stupid slave, for either fleeing his master or not recognising him, and
an undutiful son, for hating his own true father or not knowing him.

True religion

5l1Now that! have explained that wisdom and religion cannot be separated,
it remains to discuss them for themselves. 2 I am well aware how difficult
discussion is of things celestial, but the attempt must be made so that the
truth may be available in full clarity and many may be freed from error and
death who despise and reject it as long as it lurks beneath a veil of stupidity.
3 Butbeforel start to speak of God and his works, I must say afew wordson
the prophets: their evidence is now relevant. In my earlier books I held off. 13

4 Above all, anyone eager to grasp the truth should not only attend to
understanding what the prophets say but also find out with great care what
period they each lived in, so as to know both the future they predicted and
the lapse of time before its fulfilment. 5 There is no difficulty in gathering
this information at all. Each has named the reign in which he experienced the
coming of God’s spirit, 6 and many writers 14 have produced books on the
chronology; they start with the prophet M oses, who lived about 900 years
before the Trojan war. 15 When he had guided his people for 40 years, he took
J oshua as his successor, and J oshua was their leader for 27 years. 7 They

12 The bracketed text is owed to a suggestion by Brandt.

13 See 1.4-5.1.

14 See the list in Tert. Apol. 19.6.

15 L. followsTheophilus, Autol. 3.21, 29. SeeN icholson (1985), 306. Some M SS say 700,
not 900, years, but neither figure allows a reasonable chronology.

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were then under judges for 370 years. After a change of constitution they
took to having kings. Kings held power for 450 years, down to the reign of
Zedekiah, when the Jews were conquered by the king of Babylon and
endured a long captivity as slaves, until after 70 years Cyrus the Great
restored them to their lands; he came to authority over the Persians at the
same time as Tarquin the Proud was king in Rome. 8 Since a whole
chronology can be collated from Jewish history and Greek and Roman
history, even the dates of individual prophets can befitted in; the last of the
prophets was Zechariah, 16 and it is agreed that he prophesied in the time of
king Darius, in the eighth month of the second year of his reign. That is the
extent to which the prophets turn out to predate even Greek writers.

9 I set all that out so that people who try to discredit holy scripture as
something new and recently constructed can see their error; 17 they do not
know the source from which our divine religion starts its stream. 10 If
people will only lay a sound basis for understanding by collating and
considering the datings, they will develop a thorough grasp of the truth, and
when they know the truth they can also abandon their error.

Father and son

&lGod, then, who invented and constructed all things, as wesaid in book 2,
before approaching the remarkable task of making this world created a holy
and incorruptible spirit whom he called his son, 18 2 and though he later
created countless others, whom we call angels, this, his first-born, was the
only one he distinguished with a name of divine significance, presumably
because he had his father's qualities of power and supremacy. 3 That he is
the son of God supreme and endowed with maximum power is demonstrated
not just by what the prophets say, which is unanimous, but also by the
predictions of Trismegistus and the prophecies of the Sibyls.

4 In his book called 219 Perfect Discourse, Hermes uses these words: 2
'The lord and maker of all things, whom we usually call God, created the
second God visible and sensible (when I say sensible, I do not mean it
actively- whether he has sensations or notwill be dealt with later- but that

16 This is incorrect. L. is following Theophilus, Autol. 1.27.

17 Antiquity was important to Romans. SeeCic. Leg. 2.27; M in. Fei. 6.1-3. Christians, like
Jews, argued that M oses predated and inspired the Greek philosophers. See e.g. Justin, apol.
1.44.9; 59.1.

18 Seech. 8 below; L.'sthinking smacks of Arianism.

19 G indicates that L. uses or quotes Greek.

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God submitted him to perception and sight); when he had created him as his
first and unique creation, and thought him fine and full of all good, he loved
and cherished him as his only son.' 20

5 At the beginning of the poem in which the Erythraean Sibyl opens with
God supreme, she declares the son of God to be guide and commander of all
men in the following verses: 2 'Feeder, founder of all, who put the sweet
breath of life in all, and made god guide of all men.' Then again at the end,
'God gave another one for the faithful to honour.’Another Sibyl also recom¬
mends his recognition: 6 'Know that the son of God is himself your God.’ 21

6 Plainly it is also the very son of God who spoke through Solomon, the
wisest of kings and full of the holy spirit, saying as follows [Prov. 8:22-31]:
'God made me 22 as the start of his path towards his works; before time he
founded me; in the beginning, before he made the earth and established its
depths, before springs of water came forth, before all the hills he fathered
me. God made the lands and countries habitable under the sky. 7 I was
beside him when he made the sky, and when he marked his own seat; when
he set strong clouds upon the winds, when he appointed settled springs
beneath the sky, when he fortified earth's foundations, I was with him arrang¬
ing them. 8 It was I in whom he rejoiced, and I was his daily delight before
his face, when he was gladdened by the world he had made.'

9 Trismegistus calls him 6 'God’s craftsman' and the Sibyl calls him 6
'God’s adviser’ because he was given all that wisdom and virtue by God his
father so that God could use his counsel and his handiwork in the making of
the world. 23

The word

7.1Someone may perhaps inquire at this point who he is, with such power
and so precious to God, and what his name is whose first nativity not only
preceded the world but also planned it with care and built it by his virtue.

2 We need to know first that his name is not known even to the angels
who dwell in heaven but only to himself and God his father, nor will it be
made known until God’s arrangements are completed, as is reported in holy
scripture; 3 secondly, that it cannot even be uttered by human tongue, as
Hermes explains, saying: 6 'The cause of this cause is the will of God the

20 NF Corp. Herm. 5.1. Cf. Ascl. 8.

21 Orac. Sib. 3.775; 8.329; fr. 1.5ff.

22 Sc. Wisdom, as the feminine in the Latin shows.

23 Cf. IMF Corp. Herm. Ascl. 26; Orac. Sib. 8.264.

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good God, whose name cannot be uttered by human mouth,' and a little
further on (to his son): 'There is, my child, an account of wisdom,
unspeakable and holy, concerning God who is the sole lord of all, the God
who foresees all, whose naming is beyond mankind.’ 24 4 But though the
name given to him from the start by his supreme father is known to no other
than himself, he has another name among the angels and yet another among
men. A mongst men he is called J esus. For Christ is not a proper name but a
title, expressing power and kingship; thejewsusedto call theirkingsso. 5The
meaning of the title needs to be explained because of the error of ignorant
people who tend to change one letter and call him Chrest. 25 6 The J ews had
been advised earlier to prepare a holy ointment with which to anoint those
called to priesthood or kingship; for Romans today, putting on the purple is
a sign that royal status has been assumed, and for the Jews the name and
powers of kingship were conferred by an anointing with holy ointment. 7 The
ancient Greeks used the word khriesthai for being anointed (nowadays they
say aleiphesthai), as the foil owing line of Homer indicates: 'When the servant
girls had washed them and anointed them with oil;' 626 so we cal I him Christ,
that is, 'the anointed’, which in Hebrew is 'M essiah'. Hence in some Greek
texts, where the Hebrew has been misinterpreted, eleimmenos is found
written, from aleiphesthai. 27

8 But the meaning is 'king', by whichever word, not because he has
taken up this earthly kingship, for which the time has not yet come, but
because of his celestial and eternal kingship, of which we shall speak in our
final book. 28 For the moment let us speak about his first birth.

Two births

aiFirst we affirm that he was born twice, in the spirit and then in the flesh. 29
Hence the sentence in J eremiah [1:5]: 'Before I formed you in the womb I
knew you'. So too: 'Blessed is he who lived before he was born'. That has
happened only to Christ. 2 Though he was son of God from the beginning,

24 IMF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 11a; 12a.

25 L.’s comment is taken over from earlier apologists. SeeJ ustin, apol. 1.4.1-5,Theophilus,
Autol. 1.1, 12. Chrestos properly means useful; then good, especially of people. In L.'s day
khristos and khrestos would have been pronounced identically.

26 L. conflatesOd. 4.59 and 17.88.

27 Eleimmenos is perf. part, pass.: literally, having been smeared.

28 7.20.24.

29 See Monat (1982), 112-15.

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he was reborn anew in the flesh. This double birth of his has caused great
confusion in human hearts, and has shed darkness even on people who kept
the mysteries of the true religion. 3 We will explain it, however, plainly and
clearly, so that lovers of wisdom can inform themselves with greater ease
and care.

No one hearing the phrase 'son of God’ should admit such evil into his
mind as to think that God procreated as a result of marriage and intercourse
with a female: only animals with bodies do that, who are liable to death. 4 And
since God was still alone, with whom could he have intercourse? Alter¬
natively, since he commanded such power that he could do whatever he
wanted, he simply did not need anyone else's company in creating: unless
perhaps we are going to reckon, as Orpheus did, 30 that God is both male and
female, on the grounds that he could not procreate unless he had the capacity
of both sexes - as if he could have intercourse with himself, or could not
procreate without intercourse. 5 Hermes, however, was also of Orpheus’
opinion in calling God G 'autofather’ and 'automother’. 31 But if that were so,
he would be called mother by the prophets just as he is called father.

6 How then did he procreate? 32 First: the actions of God can neither be
known nor fully reported by anyone; there is information, however, in holy
scripture, where we are warned that the son of God is the word of God, and
also that the other angels are the breath of God. Speech is an expiration of
breath with significant noise. 7 But since breath and speech emerge from
different areas, in that breathing comes from the nostrils and speech from the
mouth, there is a great difference between this son of God and the other
angels. They went forth from God as silent breath, since they were not
created to pass on G od’s teachi ng but to do his bidding, 8 but the son of G od,
despite being also a spirit, came forth vocalised from the mouth of God like
a word, presumably on the basis that he was to use his voice for the people;
that is, he was going to be the master of God’s teaching and of bringing the
secret of heaven to mankind. God uttered him in the first place so that he
himself could speak to us through him, and so that his son could unveil for us
the word and will of God.

9 He is rightly therefore called the word of God because in having him
proceed from his mouth as a talking spirit, conceived not in a womb but in a
mind, God with his unimaginable virtue and his majesty’s power shaped him

30 Orph.fr. 178 (Abel) = 145 (Kern).

31 IMF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 13.

32 For the blending of Stoic and Platonic doctrine in this passage, see Loi (1970), 167-71,
and Monat (1982), 173-75.

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into a form which could thrive with its own senses and wisdom; likewise he
shaped the rest of hi s breath i nto angel s. 10 0 ur breath i s evanescent because
we are mortal, whereas the breaths of God live, last and think because he
himself is immortal and the giver of sense and life. 11 What we say may well
be carried off on the breeze and disappear, but when putin writing it survives
to a considerable extent: which is all the more reason fortrusting that God’s
word abides for ever, full of the power and sense which it draws from God
the father like a river from its source.

12 If anyone is surprised that God could be born of God by emission of
word and breath, he will surely abandon his surprise once he knows the holy
utterances of the prophets. 13 That Solomon and his father David were kings
of great power and also prophets will perhaps be known even to people who
have had no contact with holy scripture; Solomon, the second of the two to
be king, preceded the fall of Troy by 140 years. 14 H is father, composer of
the holy hymns, says in psalm 32 [33:6]: 33 'By the word of God the heavens
were fixed, and all their virtue by his breath.’ So too in psalm 44 he says
[45:1]: 'M y heart has disgorged a good word: I tell of my works to the king,’
proving of course that God’s works are known only to his only son, who is
the word of God and whose reign must last for ever. 15 So too Solomon
demonstrates that the son is the word of God by whose hands all those works
of the world were made [Eccl. 24:3-4], 'I proceeded,' he says, 'from the
mouth of the most high before all creation. I made an unfailing light arise in
the heavens, and as a cloud I covered all the earth. I dwelt in the heights and
my throne was on a column of cloud.’ 16 John also says [1:1-3]: 'In the
beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.
It was with God in the beginning. All things were made through him, and
nothing was made without him.’

Logos

ftlThe Greeks express it better than we do as 'word' or 'talk': they say G
'logos’. Logos means both talk and reason; it is both God’s word and God’s
wisdom. 34 2 Even the philosophers know of this divine account, since Zeno

33 L. was working from a text akin to the Septuagint; users of King J ames' Bible and its
successors should not expect to find close verbal correspondence. The references in square
brackets are to the Psalms as divided and numbered in K ing J ames' Bible. The difference beg ins
with Ps. 9 and ends with Ps. 147.

34 See Tert. Prax. 5.2-3; Apol. 21.10: a combination of Stoic and biblical logos. See
Spanneut (1957), 310ff.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

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declares that the arranger of everything in nature and the craftsman of the
universe is logos, which he cal Is both fate and the necessity of things, and god,
and the mind of J upiter (following the custom they had of saying J upiter for
God). 3 But the words are no problem si nee the meaning coincides with the
truth. What he called mind of J upiter is the spirit of God. Trismegistus, who
somehow traced out almost all the truth, often described the virtue and
majesty of the word, as in the text quoted earlier where he says that there is
an account, unspeakable and holy, whose utterance is beyond man’s limit. 35

4 I havespoken briefly, according to my ability, of the first birth. I must
now speak at greater length of the second birth, which is very controversial,
so that all who desire to know the truth may receive the light of under¬
standing.

The divine law

ItXl People ought principally to know that the arrangements of God most
high proceeded from the beginning in such a way that as the end of time
approached it would be necessary for the son of God to descend to earth in
order to establish God’s temple 36 and to teach his justice, neither with an
angel's virtue nor in heavenly power but in a man's shape, in a mortal
condition; and when he had completed his teaching he would pass into the
hands of impious men and undergo death, so that when death too had been
tamed by his virtue, he would rise again, offering the hope of overcoming
death to man whose condition he had adopted and borne, and also admitting
him into the rewards of immortality. 2 To prevent any ignorance of this
arrangement, we will explain that everything which we see f ulfi 11 ed in Christ
had been foretold. 3 No one is to believe this assertion of ours unless I show
that a long passage of time followed the prophets’ prediction that a son of
God would eventually be born as man and would do wonderful things and
would sow the worship of God throughout the earth, and would finally be
nailed to a cross and rise again two days later, 4 and when I have proved it all
from the writings of those very people who did violence to their God when
he was using mortal form, there will be no more obstruction whatever of the
plain fact that true wisdom abides in this religion alone.

5 The origin of the whole sacred mystery must now be narrated from the
beginning. Our ancestors, the leaders of the Hebrews, were in trouble from

35 NF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 12b.

36 The Church, that is.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

famine and helplessness; they crossed into Egypt for the sake of grain. There
they stayed a considerable time, and came under the pressure of an
intolerable yoke of slavery. 6 God then took pity on them and brought them
out of Egypt, delivering them from the king's hand after 430 years; their
leader was M oses, through whom God later gave them the law. In bringing
them out, God showed the virtue of his majesty. 7 He carried the people
through the midst of the Red Sea with an angel going before them parting
the water, so that they could go through on dry ground (or as the poet puts it
more accurately, 'The water stood up on end in a mountainous curve all
round’ 37 ). 8 W hen the despot of Egypt heard of it, he pursued with a great
band of his people; the sea was still wide open when he rashly entered, but
then the waters met and he was destroyed with all his army.

The Hebrews proceeded into a desert and saw many wonders. 9 When
they were suffering from thirst, at the blow of a stick upon a rock a spring of
water burst forth and restored them. 10 Again, when they were in hunger, a
rain of heavenly nourishment descended; a wind even brought quails into
their camp, so that they were filled not only with bread of heaven but also
with something fancier. 11 Even so, they gave God no honour for his acts of
divine kindness; after being freed from slavery and rid of thirst and hunger,
they relapsed into a life of luxury and switched attention to the profane
rituals of the Egyptians. 12 When their leader Moses climbed a mountain
and stayed there forty days, they made a calf’s head of gold, calling it A pis,
to go before them on a pole. 13 This sinful crime offended God, and he
inflicted severe punishment upon his impious and ungrateful people, as they
deserved, and put them under the I aw which he had given to M oses. 14 Later,
when they had settled in a deserted part of Syria, they lost their old name of
Hebrews: because the leader of their host was Judah, they were called
J udaeans, 38 and the land they inhabited J udaea.

15 At first they were not subject to the rule of kings; citizen judges
presided over the people and thelaw, notappointed annually liketheRoman
consuls but sustained in their jurisdiction for life. Then the title of judge was
abolished and a king’s power introduced. 16 W hile the judges had power
over them, the people had often taken up wicked religions, and God in
umbrage had equally often put them under the control of foreigners, until
their penitence softened him and he liberated them from their servitude. 17 In
the time of the kings they were also harassed for their si ns by wars with their

37 Verg.G. 4.361.

38 ludaei is Latin for both J udaeans and Jews.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

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neighbours, and finally were taken captive and led away to Babylon, thereto
pay grim penalty for their impiety as slaves, until Cyrus came into his
kingship and at once restored them by edict. 18 After that they had tetrarchs
until Herod, who lived in the emperorship of Tiberius; in Tiberius’ fifteenth
year, in the consulship of the two Gemini, on 23rd March, the Jews put
Christ on the cross. 39

19 That account of events, in that sequence, is to be found in the
mysteries of holy writ. First, however, i will explain why Christ came to
earth, so that the fundamental thinking in divine religion may be clear.

Rejection of prophets and Christ

ILIA s theJ ews kept rebelling against advice given them for their good and
kept breaking with God’s law, wandering off to wicked cults of gods, 40 so
God would fill some just and chosen men with the holy spirit and put them
as prophets in the midst of the people; through them he would then attack his
ungrateful people with threatening words for their sins, and, just as much,
exhort them to be penitent; 2 if they were not penitent, but failed to abandon
their stupidity and return to their god, he would change his covenant - that
is, he would switch the inheritance of immortal life to other nations and
would recruit himself another people of greater loyalty from among foreign¬
ers. 3 W hen the J ews were attacked I ike that by the prophets, however, they
not only rejected their warnings but in annoyance at having their sins
rebuked they killed them with studied cruelty.

All this is kept sealed in holy scripture. 4 The prophet J eremiah says
[25:4-6]: 'I have sent you my servants the prophets. Before daybreak I sent
them, and you did not listen, nor did you give ear when I said to you, Let
each one of you be converted from his wicked way and from your most evil
tendencies, and you shall live in the land that I gave to you and your fathers
from generation to generation. Do not walk after alien gods, to serve them;
do not provoke me with the works of your hands to scatter you abroad.’ 5 The
prophet Esdras, who was a contemporary of the Cyrus who restored the
J ews, speaks as follows [Neh. 9:26]: 'They have broken with you, and they
have thrown your law behind them and have killed your prophets who

39 L. derives the year (AD 29) fromTert. lud. 8, but not the day, which Tertullian sets at 25
M arch; this occurs, in the Latin tradition, only in Gaul. Did L. compose at least this book in
Gaul? See Loi (1973); cf. Barnes (1981), 291; Nicholson (1985), 304-05.

40 L.'s account is close to Cyprian Test. 1.2ff.; see M onat (1982), 178-80.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

testified that they should turn back to you.’ 6 So too Elijah in the third book
of Kings 41 [1 Kgs 19:10]: 'I have been zealous with great zeal for the lord
God almighty, because the children of Israel have left you; they have
demolished your altars and have killed your prophets with a sword, and I
alone have remained, and they seek to take away my life.'

7 Because of these wicked deeds of theirs he abandoned them for ever,
and left off sending them prophets. Instead he gave orders for his first-born
son, the craftsman of the world and his counsellor, to descend from heaven
to pass the holy worship of God to the Gentiles, to people, that is, who did
not know God, and to teach them the justice which his disloyal people had
rejected. 8 He had declared he would do this long before, as the prophet
M alachi points out, saying [1:10-11]: 'I have no pleasure in you, says the
lord, and I will not accept sacrifice from your hands, because from the rising
of the sun to its setting my name shall be glorified among the Gentiles.’ 9 So
too David in psalm 17 [18:43]: 'You shall set me at the head of the G enti les;
a people whom I have not known has served me.' 10 Isaiah also speaks as
follows [66:18-19]: 'I come to gather all peoples and tongues, and they shall
come and shall see my brilliance. A nd I will send a sign over them, and I will
send from among them those that are saved to go to distant nations who have
not heard of my glory, and they shall report my brilliance among the peoples.’

11 In wanting to send the architect of his temple to earth, God did not
want to send him in power and celestial brilliance: the people for their
ingratitude towards God were to be led into maximum error, paying the
penalty for their wickedness in not receiving their lord and God - as the
prophets had previously declared would happen. 12 Isaiah, whom the Jews
themselves killed with great cruelty, sawing him in half, 42 speaks thus [1:2-
3]: 'Hearken, o heaven, and hear with your ears, o earth, for the lord has
spoken: I have created sons and have raised them on high, but they have
spurned me. The ox knows his master and the ass his master’s stal I, but I srael
has not acknowledged me and its people have not understood me.’J eremiah
says likewise [8:7-9]: 13 'The turtle dove and swallow know their time, and
the birds of the field have watched for the time of their migration, but my
people have not known the judgment of the lord. How will you say, We are
wise, and the law of the lord is with us? The measure of the false scribe has

41 1 and 2 Samuel are also known as 1 and 2 Kings in the Vulgate. Hence the numbering.

42 The story of the brutal killing of Isaiah by Manasseh, king of Judah, is told in the
apocryphal Lives of the Prophets and in Ascension of Isaiah. It appears in the Talmud of
Jerusalem 28c, and in several Christian writers prior to L., including Justin, dial. 120, and
TertulMan, Pat. 14; Scorp. 8.

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241

been made in vain, the wise are in confusion; they trembled and were
captured, because they rejected the word of the lord.'

14Therefore, as I had begun to say, when God decided to send a teacher
of virtue to mankind, he arranged for his second birth to be in flesh; he was
to be made like a human being, to be man’s guide, companion and master.
15 But since God is kind and good towards his people, he sent his son to
exactly those people that he hated, so as not to close off their path to
salvation forever but to give them a clear opportunity of following him; thus
they could obtain the reward of life if they did follow, which many of them
do and have done, but if they repudiated their king, then by their own fault
they would incur the penalty of death. 16 God’s command was therefore for
his son to be reborn as one of them, and of their seed, so that they could not
claim with justification in law that they had notaccepted him because hewas
of alien birth; equally, God wanted the hope of immortality to be denied to
no nation on earth at all.

Incarnation

121 43 The holy spirit of God descended therefore from heaven and chose a
pious girl in whose womb to put himself. She, being filled with the intake of
the holy spirit, conceived, and without any touch from man her womb
suddenly swelled. 2 It is common know I edge that certain animals often con¬
ceive from the wind and the breeze: why should anyone think it odd when
we say that a girl became pregnant from the breath of God? Every wish of
his is easily fulfilled. 3 It certainly could seem unbelievable, had the prophets
not foretold the event many generations earlier. Solomon in song 19 44 says
as follows: 'The virgin’s womb was opened and received a fetus, and the
virgin became pregnant and was made a mother amid great pity.’ 4 So too the
prophet Isaiah, who speaks as follows [7:14]: 'Because of this God will give
you a sign: behold, a virgin will receive in her womb and bring forth a son,
and you shall call his name Emmanuel.’ 5 What can be put more plainly than
that? That was a text of thej ews, who killed him. If anyone thinks this is a
fiction of ours, let him ask them: they would be the best source; what one's
enemies say is evidence of strength enough to prove a truth.

43 For L. on the Incarnation, see M onat (1982), 180-84.

44 A Syriac version of an original Greek text, discovered in 1905, confirms the authenticity
of this text, otherwise unrecorded. See Harris and M ingana (1916-20). L. uses this and the
following text here as proofs of the possibility of virgin birth; in E pit. 44, they revert to the role
of prophetic utterances.

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6 He has in fact never been called Emmanuel, but Jesus, which means
salutary or saviour, because he came bringing salvation to all people; but the
prophet announced him as Emmanuel because God would come to mankind
in the flesh. 7 Emmanuel means 'God with us’, obviously because once he
was born of the girl people ought to acknowledge that God was with them:
on earth, that is, and in mortal flesh. Hence David says in psalm 84 [85:11]
'Truth has arisen from the earth’ because God, who contains the truth,
received an earthly body to open the way of salvation to the people of earth.
8 So too Isaiah [63:10-11]: 'But they have not believed, and have embittered
the holy spirit; he has turned hostile towards them, taking them by storm
himself; once he raised up a shepherd of his sheep from the earth, and he has
remembered the days of old.’ 9 Who that shepherd was going to be he made
plain elsewhere, saying [45:8] 'Let the heavens above exult, and let the
clouds puton justice and earth beopened, and let a saviour come up: fori the
lord God have created him.' The saviour is, as we said above, Jesus.

10 In another place the same prophet said [9:6]: 'Behold, a boy is born to
you, a son is given to you; his power is upon his shoulders, and his name is
Messenger of Great Counsel.' 11 For he was sent by God his father on
purpose to reveal to all nations under the heavens the holy mystery of the one
true God, a mystery which was taken away from a faithless people who often
sinned against God.

12 Daniel also made the same prediction [7:13-14], 'I saw,’ he says, 'in
a dream of the night, and behold, in the clouds of heaven as it were the son
of man coming, and he came right to the ancient of days. And those who
stood there presented him, and he was given kingship, honour and power,
and all peoples, tribes and tongues shall serve him, and his power shall be
eternal: itwill never pass away and hiskingshipshall notbe broken.' 13 How
do the Jews both confess God’s anointed and hope for him when they had
rejected him precisely because he was born a human? 14 Although it has
been established by God that this Christ will come to earth twice, once to
announce to the Gentiles that God is one and the second time to reign, how
do people who don’t believe in his first coming believe in his second
coming? 15 And yet each of his comings was covered by the prophet quite
briefly: 'Behold,' he said, 'in the clouds of heaven, as it were a son of man
coming.' He did not say son of God but son of man, to show that he had to
take on flesh on earth, so that when he had taken on human form and this
mortal estate he could teach men justice, and when he had done the bidding
of God and revealed the truth to the Gentiles he could even be punished with
death, so as to conquer the underworld too and seal it up, and so at last could

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rise again and reach his father, borne up on a cloud. 16 The prophet also said:
'And he came right to the ancient of days and was presented to him.' By
ancient of days he meant God most high, whose age and origin cannot be
grasped, because he alone has existed since before time just as he will
continue to exist for all time.

17 That Christ would rise to God his father after his passion and
resurrection is declared by David in psalm 109 as follows [110:1]: 'The lord
said to my lord: sit at my right hand, until i make your enemies a footstool
for your feet.'That prophet was a king: who else could he call his lord, to sit
at the right hand of God, except Christ the son of God, who is king of kings
and lord of lords? [1 Tim. 6:15] 18 Isaiah demonstrates the point more
obviously when he says [45:1-3]: 'Thus says the lord God to Christ my lord,
whose right hand I have held for the nations to bow before him, and I will
break up the bravery of kings, I will open the gates before him and the cities
shall not be closed. I will go before you and lay the mountains flat; bronze
gates will I wear away and iron bolts will I smash. I will give you hidden
treasures, invisible treasures, so that you may know that I am the lord God
who call you by name.'

19 Finally, for the virtue and faith he showed to God on earth, 'he has
been given kingship, honour and power, and all peoples, tribes and tongues
serve him, and his power is eternal: itwill never pass away, and hiskingship
shall not be broken.' 20 There are two ways of understanding that: first, he has
perpetual power now; all peoples and all tongues venerate his name, admit his
supremacy, follow his teaching and imitate his virtue; he has power and
honour whenever all the tribes of the earth comply with his behests. 21 Second,
when he comes again in brilliance and power to judge every soul and restore
the just to life, then in truth he will have control of the whole earth: then all
evil will be removed from human affairs and the golden age, as the poets cal I
it, will arise: a time, that is, of justice and peace. 22 We will discuss this more
fully, however, in the final book when we speak of the second coming; for
the moment let us explain the first coming, as we had begun to do.

Virgin birth and Christs humanity

HI 45 When God most high, parent of all, wished to transmit the worship of
hi mself, he sent a teacher of j usti ce from heaven so that the new worshi ppers
received the new law in him, or through him, which was not what he had

45 On this chapter, see M onat (1982), 137-40,188-90.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

done before, when hedid itthrough a man; thistime he wanted histeacherto
be born like a man, so that he would be like his supreme father in all
respects. 2 God the father himself, the origin and start of all things and
having no parents, is most accurately called 2 'fatherless' and 'motherless' by
Trismegistus because he was born of no one. 46 It was right therefore for his
son to be born twice, so that he too should be fatherless and motherless. 3 At
his first birth, in the spirit, he was motherless because he was generated by
God the father alone with no role for a mother, 4 but at his second birth, in
the flesh, he was fatherless because he came from a virginal womb with no
role for a father, so that in assuming a substance midway between God and
man he could guide this fragile, feeble nature of ours in the direction of
immortality as it were by hand. 5 He was made son of God through the spirit
and son of man through the flesh: both God and man, that is. The strength of
God appears in him in the deeds which he did and the weakness of man in
the suffering he endured: why he undertook it I will explain in a moment. 47

6 M eantime we learn from the declarations of the prophets that he was
both God and man in both sorts. 7 Isaiah attests his divinity in these words
[45:14-16]: 'Egypt is exhausted, and the trade of the Ethiopians and the
great men of Sheba will cross over to you and will be your slaves; they will
walk behind you bound in fetters, and will worship and pray to you. ForGod
is in you, and there is no other god beside you. You are God and we did not
know you, saviourGod of Israel. All shall be confounded who opposed you;
they will turn to awe, and fall to confession.' 8 So too the prophetJ eremiah
says [Bar. 3:35-37]: 'This is our God, and no other shall be so considered
apart from him, who found the whole path of wisdom and gave it to J acob
his son and to Israel his beloved. After that, he was seen on earth and
conversed with men.’ 9 So too David in psalm 44 [45:6-7]: 'Your throne, o
God, is for ever and ever; the rod of equity is the rod of your rule. You have
loved justice and have hated injustice. Besides, the lord your God has
anointed you with the oil of exultation.' In that word he revealed his name,
since (as I said above) Christ is named from his anointing.

10 Then J eremiah explains that he was also human, saying [17:9]: 'He is
a man, and who knows him?’ So too Isaiah [19:20]: 'And the lord shall send
them a man who shall save them and heal them by his judgment.’ M osestoo
in Numbers says as follows [24:17]: 'A star shall arise from Jacob, and a
man shall rise up from Israel.’

46 Cf. 1.7.2.

47 See ch. 16 below.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

245

11 Besides, Apollo of M iletus 48 when asked whether he was god orman
replied in this fashion:* 3 'He was mortal in the flesh, wise in miraculous
deeds, but he was made prisoner by the Chaldean lawgivers and nailed to
stakes, and came to a painful death.' 49 12 The truth is there in the first line,
but Apollo has cleverly deceived his questioner, who knew absolutely
nothing of the sacred mystery of truth: he seems to have denied that he was
God. But when he admits that he was mortal in the flesh, which is what we
too claim, it follows that he was God in the spirit, which we assert. 13 What
need to mention the flesh when it was enough to say that he was mortal?
Forced by the truth, however, he could not deny how things were.

So too with calling him wise. 14 What is your response to that, Apollo?
If he was wise, then his teaching is wisdom, and nothing else is, and those
who follow it are wise, and no one else is. W hy then are we popularly taken
for silly, stupid fools when we follow a master who is wise on the admission
of even the gods themselves? 15 As for the observation that he did mira¬
culous deeds (a very good reason for believing in his divinity), it is plain by
now that A polio agrees with us: he is saying exactly what we make boast of.

16 Nevertheless, he recovers his nerve and returns to his nonsense about
demons. He had spoken the truth perforce; now he was clearly betraying his
fellow gods and himself, except insofar as he had obscured with a deceptive
mendacity what truth had forced out of him. Hence he says Jesus did do
wonderful works, but by virtue of being a magician and not as God. 17 it is
no wonder that Apollo convinced ignorant people of the truth of this, when
thej ews, clearly worshippers of God most high, have also thought exactly
the same, despite those wonders being done daily before their eyes. Even
then they could not be forced to believe that the man they saw was God, for
all their contemplation of his great miracles. 18 Besides, David says (they
read him most, far more than the other prophets) in psalm 27, in
condemnation of them [28:4-5]: 'Give them what they are owed: they have
had no understanding in the works of the lord.’ Both David and other
prophets announced that Christ would be born according to the flesh from
the house of David himself. 19 In Isaiah it is written [11:10]: 'And on that
day there will be a root of J esse, and he who rises up from it will be chief
among the peoples; in him the nations will hope, and his peace will be in
honour’. 20And elsewhere [11:1-3]: 'T here will comeforth a rod from the
root of J esse, and a flower will rise up from the root; and the spirit of the lord

48 L. refers to the Oracle at Didyma, ten miles south of M iletus.

49 Orac. Apoll. fr. 49, 222 (Fontenrose).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

will restupon it, thespiritof wisdom and understanding, thespiritof counsel
and courage, the spirit of learning and piety; and the spirit of the fear of the
lord will fill him.' 21J esse was the father of David: it was from his root that
David declared a flower would rise up, clearly meaning the one the Sibyl
speaks of saying 6 'a pure flower will blossom'. 50

22 So too in the second book of Kings Nathan the prophet was sent to
David when he wished to build a templeforgod [2 Sam. 7:4, 5,12-14,16]:
'And the word of the lord was with Nathan, saying, Go and say to my
servant David: thus says the lord your God the almighty: you shall not build
me a house to dwell in, but when your days are fulfilled and you sleep with
your fathers I will raise up your seed after you and I will prepare its king-
ship. 23 He shall build me a house in my name, and I will lift up his throne
for ever, and I shall be his in the father and he shall be mine in the son. And
his house shall achieve faith and so shall his kingdom, for ever.'

24 The reason for the Jews’ incomprehension of this was the fact that
Solomon, David's son, built God a temple and a city, which he called
J erusalem, after his own name. 51 Hence they referred what was said by the
prophet to Solomon, but he received his authority to rule from his father,
25 whereas the prophets were speaking of him who was to be born when
David was at rest with his fathers. Furthermore the rule of Solomon did not
last for ever: he reigned for forty years. 26 T hen there is the fact that he was
never called son of God but son of David, and the house which he built did
not keep faith as the church does; the church is the true temple of God
because it does not consist of walls but of the faithful hearts of those who
believe in him and are called the faithful, whereas Solomon’s temple was
made by hand and fell by the hand. 27 Finally, his father prophesied about
his son’s works in psalm 126 in this fashion [127:1]: 'Except the lord build
the house, vain is the labour of those who built it; except the lord guard the
city, empty is the watch of him who guarded it.'

Christas high priest

3A1 52 From all this it is plain that every prophet has declared of Christ that
he would be born in the flesh one day of the family of David and would
establish an eternal temple for God, called the church, and would invite all

50 Orac. Sib. 6.8.

51 L. appears to be alone in deriving -salem from Solomon.

52 On this chapter, see M onat (1982), 141-49.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

247

the nations to God’s true religion. 2 This is the house of faith, and this the
immortal temple: if any fail to sacrifice in it, they shall not have the reward
of immortality. 3 Since Christ was the maker of the temple, a temple both
great and everlasting, so inevitably he holds an eternal priesthood in it, nor
can the temple or the sight of God be reached except through him who
established it.

4 Exactly this point is made by David in psalm 109, saying [110:3-4]:
'Before the morning star I created you. The lord has sworn and will not
repent: you are his priest for ever.’ 5 So too in the first book of Kings [1 Sam.
2:35]: 'And I will raise me up a faithful priest who will do all the things that
are in my heart, and I will build him a faithful house and he shall walk in my
sight all his days.’

6 Who was to be the recipient of God’s eternal priesthood was made
clear by Zechariah, who named him [3:1-8]: 'A nd the lord has shown me
J esus 53 standing tall before the face of the angel of the lord, and the devil
stood at his right hand to speak against him. 7 And the lord said to the devil:
Let the lord who chose J erusalem command you. And behold, a firebrand
rejected by the fire. And Jesus was dressed in filthy clothes, and he stood
before the face of the angel. A nd he repl ied to those standing before his face,
8 Take the filthy garments off him, and put a tunic on him down to his ankles
and put a clean headdress upon his head. And they clothed him with garments
and put a headdress on his head. 9 And the angel of the lord stood and
testified to J esus, saying,Thus says thelord almighty: If you havewalked in
my ways and have kept my commandments, you shall judge my house, and
I will give you people to converse with you amid these bystanders. Hear
therefore, J esus, great priest.’

10 Who could fail to think the Jews were out of their minds, laying
wicked hands on their own God after reading and hearing that? 11 And yet
from the time of Zechariah to the fifteenth year of the reign of the emperor
Tiberius when J esus was crucified, there is a span of nearly 500 years; for
Zechariah grew up in the time of Dari us and Alexander, 54 who lived notlong
after Tarquin the Proud was driven out. 12 But the Jews were tricked and
deceived in thesameway again, thinking the words were said of J esus son of
N un who came after M oses, or of J esus son of J osedech the priest, though
none of what the prophet said fitted them. 13 Those two were never filthily

53 Jesus is the form in L.'s text and in the Vulgate, but in King J ames' Bible it is Joshua:
different forms of the same name, losue is another Vulgate form.

54 NotAlexander the Great, but an earlier king of M acedon, Alexander I, who figures in the
pages of Herodotus, and reigned c. 495-452 BC.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

dressed, si nee one was a most powerful prince and the other a priest, nor did
they ever endure adversity, to be thought of as brands ejected from the
burning, nor did they stand in the sight of God and his angel sat any time, nor
did the prophet speak about the past rather than the future. 14 He spoke of
J esus son of God, to show that he would first come in lowliness and in the
flesh (for flesh is the filthy garment), to prepare a temple for God and to be
burnt like a brand in the fire: to endure from men the torture of crucifixion,
that is, and to be killed in the end. (A brand is what people call a log taken off
the fire half-burnt and out.)

15 As for the way in which he was sent to earth by God and the instruc¬
tions with which he was sent, the spirit of God working through the prophet
made it plain that when he had faithfully and steadfastly fulfilled the will of
his father on high he would receive judgment and eternal power. 16 'If you
walk in my ways,’ he says, 'keeping my commandments, you shall judgemy
house.' W hat the ways of God and his commandments are is neither ambi¬
guous nor obscure.

17 W hen God saw that evil and the worship of false gods had grown so
strong all over the world that his name by now had been almost removed
from people's memories - even thej ews, the sole repository of G od's secret,
had abandoned the living God and had strayed into worshipping things of
their own making, snared by the deceits of demons, and though warned by
their prophets were unwilling to return to God - he sent them his own son, the
prince of the angels, to turn them from wicked and empty patterns of worship
to knowing and worshipping the true God, and also to draw their minds away
from folly to wisdom and from iniquity to works of justice. 18 Those are the
ways of God in which he bade him walk, and those are the commandments
which he instructed him to keep.

He also demonstrated his faith to God: he taught that there is one God
and that he alone is to be worshipped, and he never said that he was God
himself: he would not have kept faith if after being sent to get rid of gods and
to assert a single God he had introduced another one besides. 19Thatwould
not have been proclamation of a single God, but conducting his own private
business and separating himself from the one he had come to illuminate. 20
Because he proved himself so faithful and because he took nothing at all for
himself, in order to fulfil the instructions of the one who sent him, so he
received the dignity of eternal priesthood, the honour of supreme kingship,
the power to judge and the name of God.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

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Public life of Christ

15bl Since we spoke of a second birth, in which he revealed himself to
mankind in the flesh, let us now come to those wonderful works for which
the Jews thought him a wizard, though they were actually the signs of
celestial virtue.

2 At the beginning of his youth, he was dipped by the prophet J ohn in the
riverjordan, in order to wipeoutwith aspiritual washing sinsthatwere not
his own - he simply had none - but which were sins of the flesh he had
adopted, so that by baptism, by the pouring over him of purifying water, that
is, he could save the Gentiles in the same way that by receiving circumcision
he could save the J ews. 3 Then 'a voice was heard from heaven: you are my
son; I have begotten you today’. The utterance may be found foretold by
David [Lk. 3:22 with Ps. 2:7], And the spirit of god descended upon him
shaped in the image of a white dove. 4 Thereupon he began to work very
great miracles, not by magician's tricks, which have nothing solid and true to
reveal, but by the force and power of heaven; these works had been long
foretold by the prophets in their pronouncements, 5 and they are so numer¬
ous that a whole book would not be enough to contain them. I will list them
briefly and generically, therefore, without identifying people or places, so
that I can arrive at the reasoned exposition of his suffering and crucifixion,
the goal to which my work has long been hastening.

6 His miracles were those cal led ' portentific' by A polio, 55 because wher¬
ever he went he could make the sick and the weak and those troubled by
every sort of disease well again with one word, in one moment, so much so
that even when deprived of every limb they could suddenly regain their
strength and take up their beds themselves, when a little while beforehand
they had been brought to him on them. 7 To the lame and those with problems
in the feet he gave the power not just of walking but of running. The eyes of
those whose light was blind and in deep darkness he restored to their
previous sight. 8 The tongues of the dumb he released into speech and talk.
He also opened the ears of the deaf and instilled hearing, and people covered
in filthy sores he made clean again. 9 And ail this he did not with his hands
or with any ointment but by a word of command, as the Sibyl had even
predicted: 5 'Doing well and healing all disease with a word.' 56 10 it is
wholly unsurprising that he did miracles with a word, since he was the word
of God himself, sustained by the virtue and power of heaven. 11 Nor was it

55 Cf. 13.11 above.

56 Orac. Sib. 8.272.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

enough to give strength back to the weak, wholeness to the feeble and health
to the sick and suffering if he could not also raise the dead, releasing them
from sleep as it were, and recalling them to life.

12 W hen thej ews saw that, they then tried to prove that it was the work
of demonic power, even though their own secret literature contained the
promise that all would bedoneasitwasdone. 13They could read for instance
thewordsof the prophet Isaiah in particular, saying [35:3-6]: 'Grow strong,
exhausted hands and weakened knees; you that are faint of heart, be
comforted, benotafraid, do notbe scared. Ourgod will grant you judgment;
he himself will come and make us whole. 14 Then the eyes of the blind will
be opened and the ears of the deaf will hear; then the lame man will leap like
a stag and the tongue of the dumb w i 11 be cl ear, because water has broken out
i n the desert and there i s a river i n thirsty ground.' 15 The Si by I had the same
to say in these verses: 6 'There shall be resurrection of the dead and swift
running of the lame, and the deaf man will hear, and blind men will see and
non-talkers will talk.' 57

16 Because of these miraces and divine works of his, a great host began
to follow him of the weak and sick and of those who wished to present their
own sick for healing; so he went up a deserted hill, to pray there. When he
had been there three days and the people were beginning to suffer from
hunger, he summoned his disciples, asking how much food they had with
them. They said they had five loaves of bread and two fishes in a bag. He
bade them be brought and told the people to sit down in groups of five
hundred. 17 W hile the disciples saw to that, he broke up the bread himself
into small pieces and divided theflesh of thefish, and in his hands both were
increased. When he told the disciples to give the food to the people, five
thousand of them were fed and twelve baskets over and above were filled
with the fragments left. 58 What could be more wonderful than that? 18 Yet
the Sibyl had declared it would happen; her verses go like this: 6 'From five
loaves of bread and fish of the sea he will satisfy five thousand men in a
desert place, and he will take the left-overs with all the fragments and fill
twelve baskets, for the hope of the nations.' 59 19 I put the question: what
could the art of magic have done here, when its only expertise lies in
confounding people's sight?

20 Again, when he was about to go off to a hill to pray, as he used to, he
told his disciples to take a small boat and to precede him. They set out as

57 Orac.Sib. 8.205-07.

58 M k 8:5ffM t. 14:16ff.

59 Orac. Sib. 8.275-78.

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evening began to fall, but were soon in trouble from an adverse wind. 21 When
they were in the middle of open water, he entered the sea on foot and caught
them up as if he were walking on solid ground - not like the poet’s false
picture of Orion walking on the sea, when most of his body was submerged
and 'only his head and shoulders stood out.' 60 2 2 On another occasion he
went to sleep in a boat, and the wind rose, with very dangerous gusts; they
woke him from his sleep, and he told the wind to be si lent forthwith, and the
waves, which were coming in great size, to be still: and at his word tran¬
quillity at once ensued.

23 Perhaps sacred literature lies when it says his power was so great that
at a word from him he could make winds obey him and waters serve him,
disease depart and the underworld submit. 24 W hat about the fact that the
Sibyls had set all this out in their verses long before? One of them, whom we
mentioned above, says as follows: 5 'He could check the winds with a word
and level the raging sea, walking on feet of peace in confidence.' 61 25 Another
one says: 5 'He will trample the waves, undo the sickness of mankind, raise
up the dead, drive off many pains, and from a single bag there will be more
than enough bread for men.' 62

26 This evidence is overwhelming; some people in reaction go so far as
to say that those verses are not Sibylline, but invented and compiled by our
people. 63 27 That will not be the opinion of those who read Cicero and Varro
and other old writers who mention the Erythraean Sibyl and other Sibyls
whose books are our source for those examples, and those writers were all
dead before Christ was born in the flesh. 28 I have no doubt that those verses
were treated as mad in earlier generations, since no one could understand
them. They were proclaiming wonders of a fantastic sort, for which no
reason, time or author was given. 29 The Erythraean Sibyl even said that she
would be called mad and mendacious. She said: 5 'They will call the Sibyl
mad and a liar. But you will remember me when it all happens, and no one
will call me mad any longer: me, prophetess of the great God.' 64 30 So they
lay low for many generations, to be heeded only later, after Christ’s birth and
passion had opened up the secrets, just as the prophets’ words were then also

60 Verg. A. 10.764.

61 Orac. Sib. 8.273-74.

62 Orac. Sib. 6.13-15.

63 SeeOrigen, c. Cels. 7.53, with Guillaumin (1978), at 198-200. Celsus' critique is the one
that survives; L. may well have heard the anti-Christian Hi erodes (see 5.2.2 and 12ff.) argue
along similar lines. His riposte is hardly convincing.

64 Orac. Sib. 3.815-18.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

heeded. These words had been read by the Jews for over 1500 years, but
even so they were not understood until after Christ had interpreted them in
word and deed, for he was the one the prophets had proclaimed; but what
they said could not be understood without everything being fulfilled.

Seeds of the passion

16.X 65 1 now come to the passion itself, which isoften made a cause of fierce
attack upon us (on the grounds that we worship someone who was a man
himself and who suffered notable punishment at the hands of other men, and
was crucified), in order to explain that the suffering was accepted in
accordance with God’s great plan, and that virtue, truth and wisdom are
contained in it alone.

2 If he had spent his life on earth in happiness and had been a king
throughout it in the utmost prosperity, no wiseman would either have thought
him a god or judged him worth honour as a god. That is what people with no
know ledge of true divinity do: they don't just admire wealth that fails, power
that is fragile and goods that only serve others, but they even consecrate
these things, knowingly tending the memory of dead men and worshipping a
luck already exhausted, which wise men never thought worth worship even
when it was around. 3 A mong the things of this world there cannot be one
worth heaven and veneration; it is only virtue, only justice, which can be
considered a true, heavenly and eternal good, because it is neither granted to
nor taken from anyone. 4 Since Christ came to earth equipped with that
virtueand justice, or rather, si nee he himself is vi rtue and he himself isjustice,
he came down in order to teach it and to form man. W hen he had done his
teaching, fulfilling his instructions from God, then because of the virtue
which he had both taught and exemplified in action he not only earned the
belief of all people in his divinity but also made it possible.

5 Huge numbers therefore flocked around him, either because of the
justice which he taught or the miracles which he performed, and they
listened to his advice and believed he was sent by God and was the son of
G od. A s a result, the leaders of thej ews and thei r priests grew angry because
they were being attacked by him as sinners; they became corroded with envy
because they saw themselves despised and abandoned as the multitudes
went his way, and (the chief point of their wickedness) they were blinded by
their stupid mistakes, and they forgot the advice of heaven and their prophets,

65 See M onat (1982), 196-98.

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and combined against him, forming a wicked plan to remove him and have
him crucified.

6 This the prophets had described long before. David, at the start of his
psalms, with spiritual foresight of how great a crime was going to be
committed, said [1:1]: 'Blessed is the man who has not gone astray amid the
counsel of the ungodly.’ 7 Solomon in the book of Wisdom used these words
[2:12-22]: 'Let us compass the just man about, as he is unpleasing to us and
attacks us for breaking the law. He promises he has knowledge of God and
names himself son of God. He has been created for the destruction of our
thinking and he is painful for us even to behold, since his life is different
from others and his ways are altered. 8 We are trifles in his estimation; he
keeps himself from our paths as from dirt; he prefers the latest deeds of the
just and brags that the lord is his father. Let us see therefore if his words are
true, and let us test their outcome for him. 9 Let us question him with insult
and torture, let us learn his obedience and try his patience. 10 Such were
their thoughts, and they were wrong, for he blinded them with their own
stupidity and they did not know God’s mysteries.' Solomon has described
the wicked plan made against god by impious men so well that it seems as if
he took part in it: and yet between Solomon who described it and the time at
which it happened, 1010 years went by. 11 There is nothing in that text of
our own invention or addition: it is the text the perpetrators had, and they
could read who it was aimed at, and the heirs of their name and crime still
have the text now and give voice in their readings every day to their own
damnation as the prophets foretold it; and yet they never admit it in their
hearts - which is a piece of their damnation.

12 Under frequent attack, therefore, from Christ’s disapproval of their
sins and injustice, and virtually abandoned by the people, thejews were pro¬
voked into killing him: their nerve to do that came from his humility. 13They
read in the texts of the power and glory with which the son of God would
come from heaven, and yet the Jesus they saw was humble, common and
undistinguished: so they did not believe he wasson of God, not realising that
two comings had been foretold by the prophets, his first being shrouded in
the weakness of the flesh and the second bright in the bravery of his majesty.
14 A bout the first coming David says in psalm 71 [72:6-7]: 'He will descend
likerain on afleece, and in hisdaystherewill arise justice and abundanceof
peace for as long as the moon rises.’ Rain falling on a fleece makes no noise
and cannot be noticed; Christ would come to earth, said David, to teach
justice and peace, without anyone suspecting. 15 Isaiah said [53:1-6]: 'Lord,
who has believed what they hear of us? To whom has the arm of the lord

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been shown? We have made announcements in his presence like children,
I ike a root in the thirsty earth. There is no beauty or brilliance in him: we saw
him, and he had no looks or beauty; hewas withoutdistinction, and deficient
beside the rest. He is a man under a beating, knowing how to endure weakness
because hewas rejected and left out of the reckoning. 16Thisman bearsour
sins and grieves on our behalf, and wethought him to be in pain and torment
from blows; he was wounded because of our wickedness, and he was weak¬
ened because of our sins. Teaching us peace is his task, and we have been
healed by his bruises. We have all strayed I ike sheep, and the lord has handed
him over for our sins.’ 17 In like fashion the Sibyl says: G 'He is pitiable,
without distinction or looks, so that he can give hope to the pitiable.' 66 This
humility prevented them recognising their God, and so they formed their
loathsome plan to deprive of life the one who had come to give them life.

J ewish grievances

17.1 The reasons they put forward, however, for the anger and jealousy
which they kept close in their hearts were different: Christ was trying to do
away with the law of God given them by M oses - that is, he would not give
up working for people's health on the sabbath, he emptied circumcision of
meaning, he removed the ban on pork (these are the constituents of the
sacraments of J udaism). 2AII thosewho had not yet gone over to him were
thus stirred up by the priests on these counts to judge him impious, because
he was undoing God’s law, even though he did what he did not of his own
design but following God’s will and in accordance with the predictions of
the prophets.

3 M icah declared that a new law would be given in this fashion [4:2-3]:
'Thelaw shall go forth from Sion, and theword of thelord from J erusalem,
and it shall give judgment among the multitude of peoples and shall rebuke
and expose mighty nations.' 4 The first law given by M oses was given on
M ountHoreb, noton M ountSion; thatisthelaw which theSibyl made plain
would be undone by the son of God: G 'When all these things that I have
spoken are accomplished, then in him is all the law undone.' 67

5 Even Moses himself, through whom they fell away from God and
failed to recognise him even while strenuously observing the law given
them, had foretold that a very great prophet would be sent by God to be

66 Orac. Sib. 8.257.

67 Orac. Sib. 8.299-300.

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above the law to bring God’s will to men. 6 In Deuteronomy he left the
following [18:17-19]: 'And the lord said to me: I will raise up a prophet for
them from amongst their brethren as I have raised up you, and I will put my
word in his mouth and he shall say to them what I tell him. And whoever
fails to hear what that prophet says in my name will know my vengeance
upon him.’ 7 God was obviously using the law-giver himself to convey the
fact that he was about to send his son - living, immediate law, that is, - and
was about to undo the old law given by a mortal, so that he could ratify the
eternal law anew through him who was eternal himself.

8 On the abolition of circumcision Isaiah prophesied as follows [Jer.
4:3-4]: 'Thus says the lord to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of
J erusalem: renew the newness among yourselves; do not sow among thorns.
Circumcise yourselves to your God, and circumcise the foreskin of your
heart, in case my wrath go abroad likefireand there be noneto extinguish it.’
9 So too M oses himself [Deut. 30:6)]: 'In the latter days God will circumcise
your heart for the loving of the lord your God.’ Sotoojesus 68 son of Nun his
successor [Josh. 5:2]: 'And the lord said to Jesus, M ake your knives of stone
very sharp, and sit and circumcise the sons of Israel again.' 10 He said that
the second circumcision would be not of the flesh, which the first was (a
custom thej ews maintain even now), but of the heart and spirit, which Christ
brought, who was the true J esus. 11 The prophet does not say 'And the lord
said to me’ but 'to Jesus’, in order to show that he was not speaking of
himself but of Christ, to whom God was then speaking, 12 for that earlier
J esus prefigured Christ; he was first cal led A uses, 69 but M oses foresaw what
would be and said he was to be called Jesus, so that as chosen leader of the
army againstAmalek who was attacking the sons of Israel hecould beat his
adversary in battle through the form of his name and lead the people into the
land of promise. 13 Hence his succession to M oses, to reveal the fact that a
new law given by Jesus Christ would succeed to the old law given by M oses.

14 That circumcision of the flesh is entirely without reason: if God had
wanted it, he would have made man without a foreskin from the start; but the
meaning of the second circumcision was a metaphor for the heart being
bared - that is, we must live with an openness and simplicity of heart,
because the part of the body which is circumcised has a certain similarity to
the heart and is a matter for due modesty. 15 God said that it was to be bared
so that he could warn us by the metaphor not to keep our hearts wrapped up

68 See note on 15.6 above.

69 Spelt Osee in the Vulgate and Oshea in King James' Bible (Num. 13: 9 and 17).

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- that is, not to keep any shaming crime veiled amongst the secrets of our
consciences. 16 That is the circumcision of the heart of which the prophets
speak: God has transferred it from mortal flesh to the soul, which alone will
abide. 17 In his desire to give us good advice for our life and health,
consistently with his eternal goodness, he has offered us in that image of
circumcision repentance, so that if we bare our hearts - that is, if we satisfy
God with confession of our sins -, we can obtain mercy, which those who
stubbornly conceal their crimes are denied: for he gazes not upon the face, as
we do, but upon the inmost and secret places of the heart.

18 The ban on pork is to the same effect. W hen God told them to abstain
from it, he wanted it to be understood in particular that they should abstain
from sin and uncleanness. 19 The pig is a dirty, unclean animal and never
looks up to heaven: body and face it hugs the ground, and it serves its belly
and its feeding all the time; while it lives it provides no other service as the
other living creatures do, which offer a means of sitting or riding or help in
working the land, or pull carts by the neck or take loads on their back or give
clothing with their pelts or supply milk in abundance or keep watch guarding
houses. 20 Hence the ban on using pigflesh; it is a ban on copying the life of
pigs, who are fed merely to die, so that people should not, in obedience to
belly and pleasure, become useless at acting justly and be subjected to death;
21 they should not sink into filthy lusts either, I ike the pig which wallows in
mud, or serve images made of earth, and befoul themselves with mud.
M ud is what defiles the people who worship gods: they worship mud and
earth.

Every single precept of Jewish law is aimed at the display of justice,
because they are delivered with a double meaning, so that things spiritual
can be learnt from the form of things carnal.

The passion

Iftl 70 Christ was fulfilling what God wanted done and what he had foretold
many generations earlier through hisprophets; yet despite that spur, intheir
ignorance of holy scripture people continued to condemn their own God.

2 He knew that would happen, and said repeatedly that it was his duty to
suffer and be killed for the salvation of many; nevertheless he withdrew with
his disci pies, not to avoid the inevitable endurance and suffering, but to show
that this was the proper behaviour in any persecution, in case a man should

70 There are original touches in L.'s account of the Passion. See M onat (1982), 198-211.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

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apparently fall by his own fault; 71 and he told them his betrayal would be by
one of them. 3 So J udas betrayed him to thej ews, lured on by the reward.

4W hen he had been arrested and brought before Pontius Pi late (who was
then legate of Syria 72 ), they demanded his crucifixion, objecting to him
simply for saying he was son of God and king of the Jews, and also for
having said [M k 14:58] 'If you undo thistemple, which was 46 years in the
building, I will raise it up without hands within three days', meaning that his
suffering would be short and that he would rise again, two days after the
Jewshad killed him. Hewas himself the true templeof God. 5Thesewords
of his they attacked for their ill omen and impiety. W hen Pilate heard it, and
when Jesus offered nothing in his own defence, Pilate declared that there
seemed to be nothing in him worthy of condemnation. But they, in all the
injustice of their accusation, began to cry out with the people, whom they
were egging on, and to demand the cross with shouts and yells. 6 Then Pilate
gave way, not only to their clamour but also to the prodding of the tetrarch
Herod, who was afraid of losing his throne; even so, Pilate did not deliver
sentence himself but handed him over to thej ews, so that they could judge
him according to their law.

7 So they beat him with whips and led him off, and before they put him
on the cross they mocked him: they dressed him in a garment of purple and
crowned him with thorns and hailed him as king, and gave him bitter-tasting
food and mixed him a drink of vinegar. 8 After this they spat in his face and
struck him with the flat of their hands. When his executioners were in
dispute over his garments, they drew lots for his tunic and cloak. 9 And while
all thiswas being done, nota word did heutterfrom hismouth, as if hewere
dumb. Then they hoisted him up between two criminals condemned for
robbery, and put him on the cross.

10 W hat can my sorrow be now for so great a crime? W hat words can i
employ to lament so great a wickedness? I depict no Gavian cross, such as
Cicero did, with every muscle and fibre of his eloquence and the well-
springs of his genius in full flow, crying out [Ver. 5.170] 'that it was a deed
of disgrace that a Roman citizen had been put on a cross in defiance of all the

71 On the controversial issue of how to respond to persecution, L. states boldly thatChrist
himself had withdrawn, flight was a way of imitating him, and he had intended Christians to
follow his example. L. presumably did so too. See Nicholson (1989).

72 An error. Pilate was governor (prefect) of Judaea, a minor province with no garrison,
such as was held by a lesser aristocrat (of equestrian status) or, on occasion, a freedman. Syria
was a major province, governed by a leading aristocrat (legatusAugusti pro praetore, senatorial
in status), with three legions.

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laws.' 11 Yet though Gavius was innocent and undeserving of the punish¬
ment, he was a mere man, suffering under a bad man who had no time for
justice. 12 What shall we say of the unworthiness of this cross, on which
God was hanged, put there by the very worshippers of God? Who will there
be so eloquent, so equipped with good store of words and facts, and what
speech will go speeding in such rich abundance, that that cross can be
bewailed as it deserves, a cross that was bewailed by the world itself and all
its elements?

13 Yet that is what was foretold in the words of the prophets and in the
verses of the Sibyl. In Isaiah wefind written [50:5-6] 'I am no rebel and I do
not answer back: I have submitted my back to their whips and my cheeks to
their hands, and I have not turned my face away from the filth of their
spitting.’ 14 Likewise David in psalm 34 [35:15-16]: 'They massed their
whips against me and knew me not; they were wicked and impenitent; they
tried me and mocked me with derision, and gnashed at me with their teeth.'
15 The Si by I also revealed that this would happen: 0 'He will come in the end
into lawless hands, the hands of the faithless, and they will give blows to
God with unclean hands, and with filthy mouths they will deliver poisonous
spit, and he will give his spotless back in simplicity to their whips.' 73

16 Isaiah spoke further, about the silence which he stubbornly main¬
tained until his death, as follows [53:7]: 'He was brought like a sheep to the
sacrifice, and like a lamb among the shearers without a noise; so he opened
not his mouth.' 17 So too the Si by I mentioned above: 0 'While they flog him
he will be silent, lest anyone know what his utterance is or whence it came,
so that he may speak to the dead and wear his crown of thorns.’ 74

18 As for the food and drink which they offered him before they
crucified him, David says as follows in psalm 68 [69:21]: 'They gave me gal I
for my food and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.' 19 The Si by I also
declared that this would happen: 0 'Into my food they put gall and into my
drink vinegar; this is the table of inhospitality they will reveal.' 75 20 Another
Sibyl attacks the land of Judah in these verses: 0 'In your malignity you did
not see that your God was playing with mortal ideas; instead you crowned
him with a crown of thorns and you mixed him fearful gall.' 76

21 In prophesying that the Jews would lay hands on their own God and

73 Orac. Sib. 8.287-90.

74 Orac. Sib. 8.292-94.

75 Orac. Sib. 8.303-04.

76 Orac. Sib. 6.22-24.

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kill him, these words precede the testimony of the prophets. 22 In Esdras it
is written: 77 'A nd Esdras spoke to the people: this passion is our saviour and
our refuge. Consider, and let it climb into your heart, since we shall set him
low by way of a sign, and after this we shall hope in him, so that this place is
not deserted for all eternity, says the lord god of all virtues. If you do not
believe in him and hear his announcement, you will be the laughing-stock of
the nations.’ 23 It is obvious from this that thej ews had no other hope unless
they cleansed themselves from his blood and put their hope in precisely the
man they had killed. 24 Isaiah also points out their crime, saying [53:8, 9,
12] 'J udgment of him was disabled in the face of his humility. Who will tel I
of his birth? Because his life will be removed from earth he has been led
away to death by the wickedness of my people. I will offer up the wicked for
his burial and the rich for his death, because he has committed no crime and
has spoken no lies. 25 Besides, he will overtake many himself and will
divide the spoils of the brave, because he was handed over to death and was
counted among criminals, and has borne the sins of many himself, and has
been handed over for their wickedness.' 26 David also says in psalm 93
[94:21-22]: 'They will attack the just man’s soul and condemn innocent
blood, and the lord has been made my refuge.' 27 So too J eremiah [11:18-
19]: 'Lord, tell me and I shall know. Then I saw their intentions: I was led
like a lamb without evil to become a victim; they made their plans against
me, saying, Come, let us send timber after his bread, and letusuproothislife
from the earth, and his name will be remembered no more’. 28 By timber he
means the cross and by bread his body, because he is himself the food and
life of all who believe in the flesh in which he was clothed and in the cross on
which he hung.

29 Moses himself was even more clear in his prophecy on this, in
Deuteronomy [28:66]: 'Your lifewill be hanging before your eyes, and day
and night you will be afraid and will not trust your life.’ In Numbers he says
[23:19]: 'God does not hang likea man, and he does not endure threats like
a son of man.' Zechariah has reported thus [12:10]: 'They shall gaze upon
me whom they have pierced.'

30 So too David in psalm 21 [22:17-19]: 'They have pierced my hands
and my feet, they have counted all my bones; they have watched me them¬
selves and seen me, and have split my garments among them and have cast
lots for my clothes.’ 31 The prophet did not speak of himself: he was king,
and he never suffered like that; the spirit of God spoke through him, of the

77 The words are not in Esdras and have not been traced.

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one who would endure all those things 1050 years later. That is the sum of
the years from the reign of David to the crucifixion of Christ. 32 Solomon
also, David’s son and founder of Jerusalem, prophesied that it too would
perish to avenge the holy cross [1 Kgs 9:6-9]: 'But if you turn away from
me, says the lord, and do not guard my truth, I will uproot Israel from the
land I gave it, and this house which I have built for them in my name I will
cast out utterly, and Israel will be a target for people's abuse and condemna¬
tion. This house will be abandoned, and all who pass by it will marvel and
say, W hy has God done these evils to this land and to this house? 33 And
they will say, Because they forsook the lord their God and persecuted their
king who was God's beloved, and crucified him in great humiliation: that is
why God has brought these evils upon them.'

Death and resurrection

lal 78 What more can now be said about the crime of thej ews? They were
blinded, and overwhelmed by an incurable madness; though they read these
things every day they neither understood them nor could they take precautions
against themselves.

2 As he hung there nailed to the cross, he cried out to God in a great voice
and freely gave up the spirit. And at the same moment there was an
earthquake, and the veil of the temple which divided the two tabernacles was
split in two pieces and the sun was suddenly eclipsed, and from the sixth
hour to the ninth there was darkness. 3 The prophet Amos bears witness of
this [8:9-10]: 'And it shall be on that day, says the lord, the sun will fail at
midday and the day shall be darkened of light; and I will turn your days of
joy into grief and your songs into lament.’ 4 So too J eremiah [15:9]: 'The
soul that gave birth was terrified and became weary, and the sun gave way to
her though it was yet midday; she was bruised and accursed; their remnants
I will give to the sword in the sight of their enemies.’ 5 The Si by I also says: G
'The veil of the temple is to be rent, and at midday there shall be monstrous
dark night for three hours.’ 79

6 Though that was what happened, they could not understand their
wickedness even from celestial portents; rather, because he had said that he
would rise again from the underworld two days later, for fear that his
disciples would steal and remove his body and everyone would think that he

78 For L.’s deviations in this chapter from tradition, see M onat (1982), 212-17.

79 Orac. Sib. 8.305-06.

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had risen and confusion among the people would be still greater, they took
him down from the cross and shut him in a tomb and set a guard of soldiers
close about it. 7 Two days later, however, there was a sudden earthquake
before dawn, and the place of burial opened; though the guards in their panic
and astonishment saw nothing, he emerged from the tomb alive and whole,
and setoff to Galilee to look for his disciples. In the tomb there was nothing
to be found except the gravedothes in which they had wrapped and covered
his body.

8 Yet the prophets had foretold that he would not remain in the under¬
world but would rise again two days later. David says in psalm 15 [16:10]:
'You will not abandon my soul to the underworld, nor will you allow your
holy one to see death.' So too in psalm 3 [3:6]: 'I have slept and have been
asl eep, and I have ri sen because the I ord has ai ded me.’ 9 H osea al so, the f i rst
of the twelve prophets, has testified to his rising again [13:13-14]: 'This my
son is wise because now he will not pause long in the place of his sons’
tribulation; and I will wrest him from the hand of the underworld. 0 death,
where is your judgment, or where is your sting?’ I n another place he says
[6:3]: 'He will restore us to life in two days, on the third day.' 10 That is why
the Sibyl said that after three days' sleep he would put an end to death: 6
'Death’s portion also hewill completewhen he has sleptathird day; hewill
come into the light released from the dead, being first to outline for the elect
the start of resurrection.' 80 For by overcoming death he has won life for us.

11 No other hope is thus granted to man of achieving immortality unless
he believes in him and takes up that cross of his to bear and to endure.

Return to Galilee and the meaning of the testament

2Q1 81 He set out therefore for Galilee, loath to reveal himself to thej ews in
case he should bring them to repentance and rescue them from their impiety,
and when his disci pies were gathered together again, he explained the words
of holy scripture - the secrets of the prophets, that is - which could not be
understood at all until he had suffered, because they gave notice of him and
his suffering.

2 That is why M osesand all those prophets call the law which was given
to the J ews a testament: unless the testator is dead, his testament cannot be
confirmed, and what he wrote cannot be known, because it is closed with his

80 Orac. Sib. 8.312-14.

81 On this chapter, see M onat (1982), 75-85.

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seal. 3 If Christ had not endured death, his testament could not have been
opened - revealed, that is - nor could the mystery of God have been under¬
stood.

4 All scripture is divided into two testaments. The one which came
before the advent and passion of Christ, which is the I aw and the prophets, is
called the old testament, and what was written after his resurrection is called
the new testament. 5 The J ews use the old testament, and we use the new
one: but they are not different, because the new one is the fulfilment of the
old, and the testator is the same in each, namely Christ, who took on death
foroursakeand makes us the heirs of hiseternal kingship, since thej ewish
people have been stood down and disinherited, as the prophet J eremiah
attests when he says as follows [31:31-32]: 6 'Behold, the days come, says
the lord, and I will consummate a new testament for the house of Israel and
for the house of J udah, not in accord with the testament which I gave their
fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land
of Egypt, because they did not abide by my testament, and I discounted
them, says the lord.' 7 He puts it similarly in another place [12:7-8]: 'I
abandoned my house, I let my inheritance go into the hands of its enemies.
M y inheritance became like a lion in the forest; it uttered its words over me
itself, and therefore I hated it.' 8 Since its inheritance is kingship in heaven,
he does not mean simply that he hates the inheritance itself, but the heirs, for
showing ingratitude and impiety towards him. 9 'M y inheritance,' he says,
'became to me like a lion': that is, 'I became the prey and the devouring of
my heirs, who sacrificed me I ike a cow.’ 'It uttered its word over me': that is,
'They uttered sentences of death and crucifixion against me.'

10 As for his earlier remarks, that he would 'consummate a new testa¬
ment for the house of Judah', he showed thereby that the old testament
which was given through M oses was not perfect, and he would consummate
the one which he was keeping to be given through Christ. 11 As for the house
of J udah and of Israel, he does not mean thej ews: he had deposed them; he
means us, whom he summoned from among the nations to be adopted in
their place, and we are called the sons of the J ews. That is what the Sibyl
declares when she says: G 'The divine race of the blessed J ews, the heavenly
ones.’ 82

12 The future of that race is explained to us by Isaiah, in whom the
supreme father addresses his son saying [42:6]: 'I the lord God have
summoned you to justice, and I will hold your hand and strengthen you, and

82 Orac. Sib. 5.249.

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I have given you as a testament to my people, as a light to the nations, to
open the eyes of the blind, to bring forth prisoners from their chains and
those sitting in darkness from the house of gaol.' 13 Though once we sat in
darkness, as if blind and incarcerated in stupidity, ignorant of God and truth,
we have been illuminated by him who adopted us in his testament; now that
we are freed of the evil chains and have been brought into the light of wisdom,
he has made us heirs of the kingship of heaven.

Ascension

2Ll 83 When he had appointed his disciples to preach the good newsand his
own name, a cloud suddenly wrapped itself round him and bore him up to
heaven, on the fortieth day after his passion, as Daniel foretold, saying [7:13]:
'And behold, in the clouds of the sky as it were the son of man coming, and
he came to the ancient of days.’

2 His disciples spread through the provinces, to lay the foundations of
the church in every area, themselves doing important and almost incredible
miracles in the name of God their master; when he went, he had equipped
them with virtue and power in order that the pattern of the new annunciation
could be established in strength. He also revealed them all the future: that is
what Peter and Paul preached at Rome, and their preaching remains on
record. In it'they said among many remarkablethingsthatthistoo would be
the case: after a short while God would send a king to takethej ews by storm
and to raze their cities to the ground while he beset them with the ultimate
pangs of hunger and thirst. 3 Then it would come about that they fed on their
own peopleand consumed them in turn, 4 and finally they would fall captive
into the hands of their enemies, and they would see before their own eyes
their wives most grievously assailed, their girls violated and prostituted,
their boys taken as loot, their babies smashed, and everything given over to
the wasting of fire and sword; the captives would be driven from their lands
forever, all because they had exulted over God’s beloved and most upright
son.’ 84 5 After the death of Peter and Paul, when Nero had killed them, 85

83 On this chapter, see M onat (1982), 219-23.

84 Cited from the apocryphal Preaching of Peter and Paul.

85 It was commonly believed in the early Church that Peter and Paul were martyred in
Rome at the same time, in Nero's reign. See Euseb. H ist. Eccl. 2.25.7, citing earlier sources: cf.
Chron., where he places their deaths in AD 68, under Nero. Scholars prefer AD 64, when Nero
isknownto have ordered the deaths of some Christians; seeTac. Ann. 15.44.3ff.

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Vespasian brought to an end the name and people of the Jews, and did all
those things that Peter and Paul had foretold. 86

The need for argument

221 It may seem false and incredible, but it is confirmed in my view by
people not imbued with the true teaching of holy scripture. Even so, to
complete our rebuttal of those who are too clever by half (to their own hurt),
and who refuse their faith to things divine, let us expose their error with their
own arguments, so that in the end they do eventually see that it had to happen
as we say it did. 2 In front of good judges, either evidence without argument
or argument without evidence can be strong enough, but we are not content
with one or other since we have both available, and need not leave room for
anyone of a twisted ingenuity either notto understand orto argue the opposite.

3They say that nothing could possibly make space for a nature that was
immortal; they also say that it was not worthy of god to want to become man
and to burden himself with the infirmity of flesh, to subject himself to
feeling, pain and death of his own accord - as if it were not easy for him,
since he wanted it so, to reveal himself to mankind this side of the weakness
of the flesh and to teach them justice, with all the extra authority of a self-
acknowledged God; 4 everyone would then have obeyed his heavenly
precepts if they had been supported by the virtue and power of God the
preceptor. 5 'W hy then,' they say, 'did he not come to teach men as God?
W hy did he make himself so low and feeble that he could be despised by
man and punished? W hy did he submit to the violence of weak, mortal men?
W hy did he not drive off their assaults with his virtue, or evade them with his
divinity? W hy did he not reveal his majesty at least at the moment of death,
instead of being led off to judgment like a weakling, sentenced as if guilty
and put to death as if mortal?'

61 will rebut these charges with care and allow no one to be mistaken, it
was all done for a great and remarkable reason: anyone who understands
will not just cease to wonder that God was crucified by men but will also
easily see that belief in him as God would not even have been possible if
what he intended had not been done.

86 Vespasian was sent by Nero in AD 66 to quell the Jewish revolts. The war was pursued
only sporadically after Nero's death, because of the eruption of civil war between the various
contenders for the succession, until AD 70, when Titus, the elder son of Vespasian, now
emperor, took J erusalem and destroyed the temple.

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A teacher who lived by his precepts

211 Anyone giving people advice shapes it to suit the life and habits of
others. M y question is, should he himself do what he recommends or not?
2 If he does not, his advice is undone. If it is good advice that he gives,
raising the life of man to its best possible state, then the preceptor should not
detach himself from the company of those amongst whom he is operating,
and he should live in exactly the same way himself that he teaches others to
live, so that he doesn't lessen confidence in his precepts by living differently,
trivialising his teaching by undoing in action what he tries to assert in his
sayings.

3 Every individual on the receiving end of advice is reluctant to accept
the need to obey it, rather as if his right to freedom were being denied him. 87
4 His answer to his adviser goes thus: 'I cannot do what you want because it
is impossible. You tell me not to be angry, not to be greedy, not to be lustful,
not to fear pain or death, but this is ail unnatural; why, all the animals are
subject to such feelings. Or if you think that nature can be resisted like that,
do what you say yourself, so that I can know it can be done. 5 Since you
don't, however, it is an extraordinary desire of yours to impose laws on a free
man that you don't obey yourself. Learn first, teacher, and put your own
behaviour right before you put others' right.’ 6 That's a very fair reply, i think
you'll agree. Why, a teacher of that sort will even fall into contempt, and
he'll be misled himself because he will plainly be misleading others. 7 So
what will our adviser do in response to these objections? How will he deny
these mules their evasions except by showing, with immediate action, that
his advice can be taken? 8 Hence the result that no one submits to the
teaching of philosophers. People prefer example before talk, because talk is
easy and exampleis hard. If only there were as many peopleof good behav¬
iour as there are of good advice! But advisers who can't perform have no
credibility: if they are human beings, they will be despised as frivolous, and
if they are God, then the excuse of human weakness will be offered. 9 In
sum, words must be confirmed by deeds, and philosophers can't do it. Since
the advisers are themselves overcome by the emotions which they declare
should be overcome, they cannot educate anyone to the virtue they proclaim
so falsely, and that is why they think that no perfectly wiseman has yet existed
- a man, that is, in whom supreme virtue and perfect justice are consistent
with supreme learning and knowledge - which is true. 10 No such person

87 Representing Christ as teacher (rather than, e.g., saviour) furnishes L. with another
argument for the freedom of which he is such an active advocate in this work. See 5.19.

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ever has existed si nee the world was made except Christ, who has offered us
wisdom in his words and has reinforced his teaching with his ever present
virtue.

The teacher had to be perfect and human

24.1Let us now consider whether a teacher sent from heaven could possibly
not be perfect. I am not now speaking of the one they say did not come from
god. Let us imagine that someone is to be sent from heaven to give human
life the rudiments of virtue and to conform it to justice. 2 No one can possibly
doubt that this teacher sent from heaven must be as perfect in knowledge of
everything as he is in virtue; otherwise there would be no distinction between
earthly and heavenly. 3 In a human being there can be no learning that is
private and peculiar to him: a mind enclosed in earthly tissue and impeded
by bodily decay can neither comprehend things itself nor grasp the truth
without instruction from elsewhere. 4 Even if it were to have a very great
power, it still could not grasp ultimate virtue and stand up to all the vices
whose substance is contained within its tissue. So itisthatan earthly teacher
cannot be perfect.

5 A heavenly teacher, on the other hand, who is granted knowledge by
his divinity and virtue by his immortality is bound to be as consummately
perfect in his teaching as in everything else. But that absolutely could not
happen unless he took on a mortal body. The reason for the impossibility is
obvious. 6 If he came among mankind as God (I omit the fact that mortal
eyes cannot endure the sight of the brightness of his majesty), he will
certainly not be able to teach virtue in the person of God because without a
body he will notact as he teaches, and thus his teaching won't be perfect. 7 In
any case, if perfect virtue is to endure pain with patiencein accordance with
justice and duty, if perfect virtue is to be fearless in the face of impending
death and to endure it bravely when it comes, then a teacher of that
perfection has a double duty, to teach it all by precept and to substantiate it
in action, because anyone offering precepts for living must cut off all his
escape routes in order to press on people the need to obey not perforce but
for shame, and still leave them freedom: thus those who obey have their
reward si nee they could have disobeyed had they wanted, and the disobedient
have their punishment because they could have obeyed if they wished.

8 How then will the escape routes becutoff unless the teacher acts as he
teaches, and goes the path in advance, reaching out a hand to his follower?
And how can he act as he teaches unless he is I ike his pupil? 9 If he were not

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susceptible to any suffering, his teaching could be answered as follows: 'I
certainly don't want to sin, but I get overcome; I'm dressed in weak and
feeble flesh, and it is the flesh which gets lustful and passionate, and scared
of pain and dying. I am led against my will, and I sin not because I want to
but because I am compelled to. I'm well aware that I'm sinning, but I’m
driven by a weakness that’s inevitable, and I can’t resist.' 10 What will the
teacher of justice reply to that? How will he beat down in argument a human
being who can offer the excuse of his own flesh for his sins unless he himself
is clothed in flesh, to show that even the flesh can achieve virtue? That sort
of resistance cannot be beaten down except by example. 11 Teaching can have
no authority unless the teacher can take the lead in acting it out: because
human nature with all its proclivity to vice wants not just indulgence for its
patent sinning but some grounds as well, 12 so the master and teacher of
virtue must be very I ike man, so that by conquering sin he can teach man that
sin can be conquered by man as well.

13 If he were immortal, on the other hand, hecould notpossibly setman
an example. There will be some faithful fellow and he will say, 'You don’t sin
because you’re free of thisbody, and you haveno lusts because an immortal
has no needs at all, whereas I need all sorts of things to keep this life of mine
going. You don't fear death because death can haveno power over you, and
you despise pain because no act of violence can touch you, 14 whereas I'm
mortal and I fear both, because they bring me the most excruciating agonies,
which the weakness of the flesh cannot withstand.' 15 The teacher of virtue
must remove this escape route too to prevent people attributing sin to
necessity rather than to personal failing. 16 One measure of his perfection
must be a complete impossibility of objection by the pupil, so that if the
pupil says 'Your advice is impossible to take’ he can reply 'But I take it.'
'Yes, but I’m clothed in flesh, whose peculiarity it is to sin.’ 'I too have that
same flesh, but sin has no mastery over me.' 17 'It is hard for me to despise
wealth because I cannot live in this body without it.’ 'I too have a body, and
yet I fight against all desires.’ 'I cannot endure pain or death in the cause of
justice because I’m weak.’ 'Pain and death also have power over me, and yet
what scares you I overcome, in order to make you too a winner over pain and
death. I leadtheway through things thatyou claim cannot be endured: if you
cannot follow advice, follow example.' Thus every excuse is pre-empted,
and people are bound to admit that they are unjust by their own fault in not
following their teacher of virtue who is also their guide.

You can now see how much more perfect a mortal teacher is in being
able to guide other mortals than an immortal teacher would be: hecould not

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teach endurance because he would not be susceptible to suffering. 18 This
does not lead me to put man before God; I simply point out that perfect
teaching is not within human competence unless the human being is also
God, so that he can force people to obedience with all the authority of
heaven, and it is not within God’s competence unless he puts on a mortal
body, so that by fulfilling his own advice in his own actions he puts the rest
of us under the necessity of obeying him.

19 It is therefore as clear as water that anyone due to be the leader of
living and the teacher of justice must be incarnate; otherwise his teaching
cannot be full and perfect, and have fundamental roots and abide sure and
stable among men, and he himself must endure the feebleness of flesh and
body and take upon himself the virtue which he teaches in order to demon¬
strate it in deed and word together. So too he must be susceptible to death
and all manner of suffering, since it is in the endurance of suffering and in
enduri ng death that the requi rements of vi rtue are exercised. A11 these thi ngs
are, as I have said, what the perfect teacher must endure, to show that they
can be endured.

The teacher had to be God and man

25^1 People should therefore learn, and understand why God most high in
sending his deputy and messenger to educate mortality in the precepts of
justice wanted him to take on flesh, to be crucified and to be punished with
death.

2 Since therewasnojusticeon earth, he sent his teacher I ike a living law,
to establish his name and found a new temple, and to sow true and pious
worship throughout the earth by word and by example. 3 So that it should be
certain, however, that he was sent from God, he was not to be born as
humans are, the product of two mortals; so that it should be plain that even as
a man he was of heaven, he was made without the intervention of a begetter.
4 He had a spiritual father in God, and just as God was father of his spirit
without a mother, so a virgin was mother of his body without a father. 5 He
was therefore both God and man, being constituted midway between the two
(which is why Greeks call him G middleman), so that he could bring man to
God: that is, to immortality.

If he had only been God, then as said above he could not have presented
man with examples of virtue, and if he had only been man, he could not drive
people towards justice without the addition of a superhuman authority and
virtue. 6 For even though man is composed of flesh and spirit, and the spirit

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should earn its eternity with works of justice, since the flesh is earthy and
therefore mortal, so it takes the spirit with it, linked together as they are, and
draws it away from immortality towards death.

7 Spirit which had no part in flesh could not possibly be man’s guide to
immortality, since flesh prevents spiritfrom following God. It is feeble, and
liable to sin, and sin is the sustenance of death. 8 Hence the coming of the
mediator - God, that is - in flesh, so that the flesh could follow him and
snatch man from death whose dominion is in the flesh. He put on flesh so
that by taming its lusts he could show that sin is no necessity but a matter of
determination and will. 9 The one great and pre-eminent fight we fight is
with the flesh: our infinite carnal lusts oppress the soul and prevent it from
retaining its mastery; they enslave it with the sweetness of pleasure and
temptation, and they work on it with everlasting death. 10 God revealed and
declared to us the means of overcoming the flesh so that we could fight
against those lusts. When our virtue is perfect, and is released from all calcu¬
lation, it bestows upon the winners the crowning reward of immortality.

M eaning of miracles and of the passion

261 88 I have said why God preferred to adopt lowliness, feebleness and
suffering; now the reason for the cross must be given and its importance laid
out. 2 Not only the divination of the prophets (which came out true for
Christ) but also the point of his suffering itself demonstrate the supreme
father’s dispositions from the beginning and his organisation of everything
that has happened since. 3 What Christ suffered was none of it in vain; it had
as great a symbolic significance as all the divine works he did, and their
power and importance were clearly considerable at the time and were also
pointing to something for the future.

4 He opened the eyes of the blind, it is a heavenly virtue to restore light
to those without it, but in doing so he was indicating that when he turned to
the people who did not know God he would enlighten the hearts of the
ignorant with the light of wisdom and would open the eyes of the heart to
behold virtue. 5 T he truly blind are those who do notsee heaven and worship
fragile things of earth, plunged in the darkness of ignorance.

6 He opened the ears of the deaf. That was not all that his heavenly
power was doing in the matter; he was also indicating that in a short while
the divine words of God would become both audible and intelligible to those

88 On this chapter, see M onat (1982), 229-38.

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deprived of the truth. True deafness you may attribute to those who do not
heed both the truth and the feasibility of things celestial.

7 He released the tongues of the dumb into speech. That is a wonderful
act of power, even when it was the only thing done; but in this virtue of his
there was another meaning, which was to show that those ignorant hitherto
of things celestial would soon understand the teaching of wisdom and would
soon bespeaking of God and truth. 8 It is someone with no understanding of
the godhead who is truly tongueless and dumb, even if he is the world's best
orator otherwise. For when the tongue begins to speak the truth, which is to
interpret the virtue and majesty of the one and only God, then at last it is
performing the task it was made for, but as long as it tells lies it is out of its
path. He who cannot set forth God’s words had better be dumb.

9 He also restored the feet of the lame to their task of walking. The
robustness of God’s work there is praiseworthy, but as metaphor it contained
the fact that if the aberrations of our straying, secular life were checked, the
path of truth would be revealed, and people could travel on it to win God’s
grace. 10 The man to be thought of as truly lame is the one wrapped in the
gloom and dark of ignorance; he does not know where he is going, and he
treads the path of death with steps that stumble and falter.

11 Healso cleansed bodies thatwerefoul with blisters and sores.Thatwas
no slight operation of his immortal power itself, but his energy portended the
fact that his teaching was going to purify those stained with the blisters of sin
and the blotches of vice by teaching justice. 12 True leprosy or elephantiasis
must be considered the disease of those who are driven to crime by
numberless lusts or to acts of outrage by their insatiable need for pleasure:
they are branded with blisters of shame and marked with an eternal scar.

13 He revived the bodies of the dead; he called on them by their own
names and retrieved them from death. What act could fit God better? W hat
could be more worth a miracle in every generation than to re-register a life
expired, to add to the f ul I ness of its mortal span, and to expose the mysteries
of death? 14 But this inexpressible power of his was the sign of a greater
virtue: it showed that his teaching was going to have such force that all the
peopleon earth who werelostto God and subject to death would beinspired
by knowledge of the true light and would come to the rewards of immor¬
tality. 15 The truly dead you may reckon arethosewho do notknow theGod
who gave them life and who debase their spirits from heaven to earth and
tumble into the snares of eternal death. 16 The things that he did for them
were thus images of things to be; what he revealed in bodies maimed and
damaged bore the shape of things spiritual, so that in this world he could

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display the work of a non-earthly virtue, and for the future he could show the
power of his own heavenly greatness.

17 If then his deeds had a further significance, the signification of a
greater power, so too his suffering was not simple or superfluous, and it did
not come about by chance. 18 J ust as his deeds revealed the great virtue and
power of his teaching, so too his sufferings proclaimed the fact that his
wisdom would be a thing to hate. The drink of vinegar and the food of gall
promised sharpness and bitterness in this life for the persecutors of truth.
19 Though his actual suffering, sharp and bitter in itself, gave us an indica¬
tion of those torments yet to come that are set up by virtue itself for those
who abide in this generation, nevertheless our model for persecution, toil
and misery was the arrival in our teacher’s mouth of food and drink of that
sort. 20 All these things must be endured to the end by those who follow
truth, because truth is sharp and loathsome to all who have no virtue, who
surrender their lives to pleasures that are lethal. 21 The crown of thorns that
was set upon his head made it plain that he would gather himself a people of
God from among sinners: for crown means people standing in a ring. 89

22 Before weknew God, when we were unjust people, we were thorns: bad,
that is, and sinful, ignorant of good; we were strangers to any notion of
justice and its works, and we mucked up everything with our crimes of lust.

23 Picked as we therefore are from the briars and thorns, we are the ring
round God’s holy head, because we have been summoned by him in person,
we have flocked to him from all sides, and we stand by God as our master
and teacher, and we crown him king of the world and lord of all things living.

24 As for the cross, there is a great power in it, and great reason, which
I will now attempt to demonstrate. 25 When God decided to set man free, as
I explained above, he sent a teacher of virtue to earth, to shape man for
innocence through precepts of salvation, and also to open the road to justice
by his immediate works and deeds: man could step on that road and by
following his teacher could come to eternal life. 26 That teacher was given a
body and clothed in flesh so that he could present man, for whose instruction
he had come, with examples of virtue and with encouragement thereto. 27 But
when he had applied his pattern of justice to all the obligations of life, in
order to pass on to man endurance of pain and contempt for death (by which
virtue is made perfect and complete), he came into the hands of an impious
nation, even though he could have avoided it through his knowledge of the

89 L. has in mind the use of corona, crown, to be seen in e.g. Cic. Brut. 192, Ver. 3.49 and
Tusc. 1.10, and in other classical authors.

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future, and could have repelled it with the same virtue that worked his
miracles. So he endured the torture, the wounds and thethorns. 28 Finally he
did not refuse to undertake even death, so that man could triumph over death
and al I i ts terrors as a thi ng suppressed and put i n chai ns under the leadershi p
of Christ.

29 Why the supreme father chose the particular sort of death for him to
diethathedid allow isexplained asfollows. Someone may possibly say, 'If
he was God and he wanted to die, why did he not at I east suffer some decent
form of death? Why crucifixion of all things? Why go for humiliation in a
sort of penalty that even a free man, however guilty, wouldn’t obviously
deserve?’ 30 First: he who came in humility to bring help to the lowest in
society and to reveal the hope of salvation to all had to die the sort of death
that is common among the lowest in society, in case there were even one
who could not imitate him. 31 Second: his body had to be kept whole, since
he was due to rise from the dead two days later. N o one should be unaware
of the fact that he himself in speaking of his suffering had already made it
known that he had the power of laying down and taking up his spirit when he
wanted. 90 32 Because he gave up his spirit while crucified, his executioners
did not think it necessary to break his bones, as the custom was; instead, they
merely pierced his side. 33 Thus his body was taken down from the cross
and carefully laid in its tomb still whole. That was all done so that his body
should not be so wounded or damaged that it was unsuitable for resurrection.

Another important reason for God preferring crucifixion was that on a
cross he would necessarily be raised on high, and God’s suffering would be
visible to all nations. 34 A man who hangs on a cross is conspicuous to all
and higher than everyone else: hence the choice of crucifixion, to indicate
that he would be so conspicuous and so high up that all nations would
converge from all overtheworld both to recognise him and to worship him.
35 Finally, no nation is so savage and no region so remote that either his
suffering or the sublimity of his greatness could be unknown. 36 In his
suffering he stretched out his hands and spanned the world, to show even
then that a great gathering of people from all tongues and tribes would come
beneath his wings, from the rising of the sun to its setting, and would accept
upon every forehead that great and lofty mark of baptism.

37 The Jews offer a symbol of this even now, when they mark their
thresholds with the blood of a lamb. When God was about to strike the
Egyptians, he told the Flebrews(in order to keep them safe from the blow) to

90 L. alludes to Jn 10:17-18.

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sacrifice a white lamb without blemish, and to make a mark on their
thresholds with its blood. 38 So when the first-born of Egypt all died in one
night, the Hebrews alone were safe because of the mark of blood, not
because the blood of an animal has power enough in itself to save people but
because it was an imageof things to be. 39Thewhitelamb without blemish
was Christ, innocent, just and holy, that is, and his sacrifice by those same
J ews has been the salvation of all who make upon their foreheads the mark
of blood, the mark of the cross, that is, on which he shed that blood. The
forehead is man’s highest threshold, and wood wetted with blood signifies
the cross. 40 Finally, the sacrifice of an animal is called by those who do it
Pascha, from the Greek paskhein, because it is the symbol of suffering, and
God with his foreknowledge of the future passed it down to his people,
through M oses, for their celebration. 41 At the time, the power of theimage
lay in its ability to thrust away danger then, so that it would be plain how
strong truth itself would be in protecting God’s people in the whole world’s
ultimate need. 42 In what way, or at what point of peril, there would be
safety for all who put this sign of the true and God-given blood upon the high
point of their bodies I will explain in my final book.

Power of the cross over demons

27.1For the moment it is enough to lay out how great the mark’s potency is.
The terror it causes to demons will be known to anyone who has seen how
far those conjured in the name of Christ flee from the bodies they beset. 91

2 W hen he was at work among men, he could rout all demons with a word
and could restore minds disturbed and maddened by evil attacks to their
former senses himself; now it is his followers who free people from the same
spirits of defilement in the name of their master and the sign of his suffering.

3 Proof of this is not difficult. If someone with his forehead duly marked is
present at a sacrifice to gods, the sacrifice simply doesn't work, 'nor can the
priest when asked interpret the response,’ 92 and this has often been a main
cause for bad kings to persecute justice. 4 When certain servants of our
persuasion were with their masters at a sacrifice, through the mark made on
their foreheads they put their masters’ gods to flight, so that the future could
not be made out in the victims' entrails. 93 5 W hen the diviners realised it, at

91 For L. on demons, see 2.14; and Schneweis (1944).

92 Verg.G. 3.491.

93 The incident is described in the later work de mort. persec. 10.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

the instigation of the demons for whom they divine they complained that
profane people were taki ng part in the ritual, and they drove thei r bosses i nto
a frenzy to make them storm the temple of God and foul themselves with
real sacrilege, to be expiated with very fierce punishment of the persecutors.

6 Even after that, people in their blindness cannot understand either that
this is the true religion, with so great a power of victory in it, or that theirs is
false, in its incompetence to meet the challenge. 7They claim that their gods
act thus from hatred, not fear: as though hatred is possible in any gods unless
they cause harm or have that power. It would better suit their supposed
superiority to visit those they hate with immediate punishment rather than
run away, 8 but because they cannot approach people on whom they see the
mark of heaven, nor can they harm people who are protected by the immortal
sign as if by an impregnable wall, they use people to attack them, and
persecute them by other men’s hands.

9 If people admit the existence of gods I ike that, then we have won. You
simply cannot escape the truth of a religion which knows the demons’
system, understands their cleverness, blunts theirviolence, tames and subdues
them with the weapons of the spirit, and forces them into surrender. 10 If
people deny the existence of such gods, on the other hand, they will be
rebutted by the evidence of the poets and philosophers. But if they don't
deny their existence and don't deny their evil, what else can they say except
that some are gods and others are demons? 11 So let them tell us the
difference between the two types, and then we can know which to worship
and which to curse, and whether they have some link between them or are
truly hostile to each other. If there is some necessary link, how far shall we
distinguish them? How shall we avoid muddling the honour and worship
that belong to each? If they are enemies, on the other hand, why don't the
demons fear the gods, or, alternatively, why can't the gods scare off the
demons? 12 Imagine someone under the influence of a demon’s touch going
mad and raving like a lunatic: let’s take him into the temple of J upiter Best
and Greatest - or, sincej upiter doesn't know about healing people, into a
shrine of Aesculapius or Apollo. Then let the priest of either god bid the
harmful spirit come out of the man in his god's name: there is no way it can
happen. 13 So what is the gods’ power if they cannot keep demons under
control, yet when those same demons are adjured in the name of the true
God they exit straightaway? 14 W hat is their reason for fearing Christ and
not fearing Jupiter, unless what the people think are gods are actually
demons? Suppose finally there werea public confrontation between someone
generally agreed to be suffering a demonic attack and the priest of Apollo at

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Delphi: they will both shudder at the name of God in like fashion, and
Apollo will come out of his priest as smartly as the demon out of the man,
and once his god has been adjured and put to flight, the priest will be silent
forever. So: the demons that people say should becursed and what they pray
to as gods are one and the same thing. 15 If they don't think we can be trusted,
let them trust Homer, who counts great Jupiter with the demons, 94 and let
them trust other poets and philosophers too, who sometimes say demon and
sometimes god, but only one of the words is true, and the other is false.

16 When those evil spirits are called to account, they admit that they are
demons, but when they are worshipped they lie and say they are gods, so as
to send people astray and distract them from knowledge of the true God,
through whom alone eternal death can be avoided. 17 They are also the ones
who have established a variety of worship for themselves in different regions
in order to bring man down, and they do it under false names in order to
deceive. Because they could notachievedivinity on theirown, they assumed
the names of great kings in order to get themselves divine honours under
those titles. 18 This error can be dispelled, and the truth can be brought into
the light. Anyone wanting to investigate further should call a meeting of
those skilled in summoning up spiritsfrom the underworld. Let them call up
J upiter, Neptune, Vulcan, M ercury, Apollo, and the father of them all, Saturn:
they will all respond from the underworld, and will answer questions and
comeclean about themselves and God. 19 After that let them call up Christ:
he won't attend, he won't appear, because he was no more than two days
down there. You can't have proof more certain than that. I have no doubt
myself that Trismegistus arrived at the truth by some such analysis; he said
everything about God the father and much about the son which is contained
in the divine secrets.

Meaning of religion

2&lSince things are as we have explained, it is plain that man can have no
hope of life unless he casts away his silliness and his miserable mistakes and
recognises and serves God; he must renounce this temporal life and teach
himself the rudiments of justice in order to cultivate true religion. 2 We are
born on the following terms, that we present our just and due obedience to
God who creates us, and that we acknowledge and follow him alone.

3 This is the chain of piety that ties and binds us to God: hence the word

94 See note on 2.14.6.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

religion, and not as Cicero takes it, from re-reading. 95 In book 2 de Natura
Deorum he says [71-72], 4 'It is not only philosophers who distinguished
superstition from religion but also our own ancestors. People who spent
whole days in prayer and sacrifice to ensure their own children would
survive 96 were called superstitious, 5 while people who reviewed and re¬
thought everything of relevance to theworship of gods were called religious,
from relegere, just as the elegant are so called from eligere and the diligent
from di Iigere and the intel Iigent from intel Iegere. 97 1 n alI these words there is
the same vital element of legere as there is in religious. In the case of super¬
stitious and religious, one is a word of reproof and the other a word of
praise.' 6 The ineptitude of this interpretation can be learnt from the facts. If
both superstition and religion are being practised in the worship of the same
gods, then there is little or no difference between them. 7 What good reason
will there be, frankly, for thinking that to pray once for the health of one's
children is the mark of a religious man and to do so ten times is super¬
stitious? If to do so once is very good, it must be better still to do so more
often. If prayer at prime is good, all day is better, and if one victim serves to
appease, more w i 11 appease more, because acts of obedience multi pi i ed gai n
favour rather than offend. 8 We don't think servants a nuisance who are ever
present to assist and obey; we prize them rather. So why should a man come
in for reproach, and get a bad name for loving his sons or honouring God too
much, while one who doesn't is to be praised?

9 This argument works the other way round too. If praying and sacri¬
ficing all day every day is a matter for accusation, so it is to do so once. If to
pray regularly for surviving children is a vice, then the man who does so
only occasionally is superstitious too. Alternatively, why should the label of
vice be appl ied to a deed that is peerless for its honesty and j usti cel 10 A s for
Cicero’s remark that 'those who carefully reviewed everything of relevance
to the worship of gods were called religious from relegere’, why should
those who act so many times a day lose the title of religious when as a result
of their concentration they are simply making a much morecareful review of
the ways in which gods are worshipped? 11 Well? Religion is of course
worship of what is true, and superstition is worship of what is false. And

95 L. relates religio to religare, to tie down; in the passage quoted Cicero relates it to
relegere or religere, to pick over or re-read.

96 Literally 'should be survivors'; survivors in the Latin issuperstites.

97 The basic sense of legere is to pick; the prefixes e-, di/dis- and inter- give to pick out, to
pick through and to pick between.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

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what you worship is absolutely important, more so than how you worship or
what you should pray. But because worshippers of gods think they are reli¬
gious when in fact they are superstitious, so they cannot distinguish religion
from superstition or explain the meaning of the words. 12 We have observed
that the word religion comes from the bond of piety because God has bound
man to him and tied him with piety: we simply have to serve him as master
and obey him as father. 13 Lucretius interpreted the word much better when
he said [1.932] he was 'untying religious knots'. People are called
superstitious, on the other hand, not for praying for surviving chldren - we
all pray forthat- buteitherforcultivating a surviving memory of thedead or
for surviving their own parents and worshipping images of them at home
like household gods. 14 Superstitious was the word for people who used to
develop novel rituals to divert honours from gods to dead people who they
thought had been elevated above human rank to a place in heaven; 15 religious
was kept for those who worshipped the long-established public gods. Hence
Vergil’s line [A. 8.187]: 'A superstition vain, and ignorant of the ancient
gods.' 16 But si nee wefind that the ancient gods were also consecrated after
death in the same fashion, superstitious is the word for those who worship
quantities of false gods, and religious is for us who pray to the one true God.

Father and son are one

29L1 11 may be asked how we can assert two gods, God the father and God
the son, when we say we worship one God. This assertion puts a good
number of people into confusion. 2 What we say seems probable enough to
them except on this one point, where they reckon we are on slippery ground
in admitting to a second god who is also mortal. His mortality has been
discussed; let us now explain the oneness of God.

3 When we talk of God the father and God the son, we do not mean
different gods and we do not separate one from the other, because the father
cannot be separated from the son nor the son from the father, si nee a father
cannot be called a father without a son and a son cannot be created without
a father. 4 Since father creates son and son creates father, there is one and
the same mind in each, one and the same spirit and one and the same
substance. But the father is I ike a spring infull flow andtheson likeastream
derived from it; the father is like the sun and the son like a ray projected
from it. 5 Because the son is loyal to the supreme father and precious to him,
he is never separated from him, just as a river cannot be cut off from its
source nor a sunbeam from the sun; the water of a source is in the river, and

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the light of the sun is in a sunbeam. Equally, a voice cannot be divorced from
a mouth, nor can virtue or an act of virtue be detached from a body. 6 W hen
prophets speak of the handiwork of God, his virtue and his utterance as one
and the same thing, the lack of distinction is due to the fact that a tongue, the
instrument of utterance, and a hand, theagentof virtue, areindividual pieces
of one body. 7 A more immediate example may be better. When a man has a
son whom he loves especially but the son lives in the house, under the hand
of his father, father may grant son the name and power of master, but in civil
law there is said to be only the one house and one master of it. 8 So this
world is God’s one and only house, and father and son who occupy the
world in total unanimity are one God: one is as two and two as one. 9 There
is no cause for surprise in this, since son is in father because father loves son
and father is in son because son obeys father’s will faithfully, and never does
nor ever has done anything except what father wished or required.

10 Finally, Isaiah explained that there was one God, as much father as
son, in the text quoted earlier, 98 when he said 'They will adore you and pray
to you, because God is in you, and there is no other god apart from you.' In
another place [44:6] he says likewise, 'Thus says God the king of Israel, the
eternal God who rescued him: I am first and I am last, and there is no God
beside me.' 11 Though he put forward a pair of persons, God the king -
Christ, that is - and God the father who raised him from the dead after his
passion, just as we said 99 the prophet Hosea claimed in saying 'I will wrest
him from the hand of the underworld,’ nevertheless he added 'and there is no
God beside me' with reference to each person, since he could have said
'beside us'. Butitsimply would not have been proper to splita unitso close
knitand usea plural of it. 12 Forthe supreme God isoneGod, theonly God,
free and without origin, because he himself is the origin of everything and in
him are contained at one and the same time both the son and everything else.
13 Since, then, the mind and will of the one is in the other, or rather, since
there is one and the same mind in each, each is rightly called the one God,
because whatever is in father flows through to son and whatever is in son
comes through from father. 14 God most high, the one and only God, cannot
therefore be worshipped except through his son. Anyone who thinks he is
worshipping only God the father in failing to worship the son fails even to
worship the father, 15 whereas anyone who adopts the son and wears his name
is worshipping father at the same time as he worships son, because son is

98 13.7 above.

99 19.9 above.

BOOK 4: TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

279

representative, messenger and priest of God most high. The son isthedoorof
the great temple, the path of light, the guide to salvation and theentry into life.

H eresy

30l1 Because of the existence of many heresies and division among God’s
people from the attack of demons, truth must be given a brief definition and
placed in its proper home; then, if anyone desires to drink the water of life,
he need not go to 'polluted poolswhich have no channel’ [J er. 2:13] but can
become acquainted with its richest source, and when he has drunk of that he
can have perennial light. 2 We need to know above all that he and his
representatives foretold the inevitability of many sects which would break
theconcord of the holy body, and that they warned us to take great care never
to fall into the traps and tricks of that adversary of ours, with whom God
wished us to fight; 3 at that point certain commands were given, which we
must keep for ever, but many people forget them; abandoning the road to
heaven they have made paths off track for themselves, by winding and
precipitous ways, in order to draw careless and simplefolk towards darkness
and death. I will explain the present extent of this.

4 There have been some amongst us either I ess firm in their faith, or less
knowledgeable or less careful, who caused a split in our unity and sent the
church different ways. 5 There were some people who, despitea dodgy faith,
pretended they knew God and worshipped him; by building up their
resources and concentrating on office they tried to gain the top priesthood.
W hen put down by people more powerful, they then preferred to withdraw
with their supporters rather than have over them the people they had wanted
to dominate themselves. 6 Then there were people not adequately instructed
in holy scripture; they were unable to meet the attacks on truth made by
objectors saying that it was impossible or inappropriate for God to shut
himself in the womb of a woman, and that his heavenly majesty could not be
reduced to such feebleness that he became the butt of mankind, mocked,
despised and insulted, in the end enduring torture and being nailed to an
accursed cross. 7 Since they lacked the ability or the knowledge to fight off
all these arguments - they could not see the powerful reason for events in
any depth - they were tempted off the true path, and corrupted holy scripture
to give themselves a new doctrine, without root or stability. 8 Some again
were attracted by the utterance of false prophets (the true prophets and God
himself had both given warning of them), and they fell away from God’s
teaching and abandoned the true tradition.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

9 AII those groups of people were trapped by the deceptions of demons;
they should have looked out for them and taken care, but they failed to do so
and lost the name and the worship of God. 10 For when they are called
Phrygians or Novatians or Valentinians or Marcionites or Anthropians or
whatever else they get called, they have stopped being Christians; they have
lost the name of Christ and have put on titles that are human and external.

11 It is only the catholic church that keeps true worship. It is the source
of truth, the home of faith and the temple of G od: anyone who does not enter
it, or who walks out from it, is estranged from hope of life and salvation. No
one should preen himself on his pertinacity in argument: 12 it is a matter of
life and salvation, and if life and salvation are not most carefully and
cautiously considered, then they will be lost and gone. 13 Nevertheless,
because certain particular groups of heretics each think that they are
specially Christian and theirs is the catholic church, it must be realised that
the true church is the one where confession and repentance exist, the one
which cares in healing fashion for the sins and wounds to which the flesh in
its weakness is susceptible.

141 have set this forth briefly for the moment by way of warning: no one
seeking to escape error should get entangled in greater error by failing to
understand the innermost truth. We shall fight more fully and more exten¬
sively later against all the sects and their lies, but this will be in a separate
work with its own focus.

15 Since we have now spoken adequately about true religion and
wisdom, it follows that in the next book we will speak of justice.

BOOK 5: J USTICE

Supposing debate is allowed, the cause demands appropriate strategies
and skilled advocates

LI 1 There is no doubt on my part, emperor Constantine, that if this work of
mine which asserts the oneness of that founder of all things and ruler of this
vast world comes into the hands of those whose religions are all wrong, then,
intolerant as they are because of their gross superstition, they will assail it
with curses, and though they may scarcely read its prologue, they will attack
it, reject it and curse it; if they had the patience either to read it or to hear it
read, they would think they were smeared and besmirched by an act of evil
beyond expiation. 2 We beg these people, nevertheless, by the law of
humanity, if possible not to condemn before they know the whole story. If
opportunity for self-defence is granted to those who commit sacrilege, to
traitors and to poisoners, and if no one may be found guilty case unheard,
then the justice of our request is plain: anyone who comes upon these words
should read right through if he reads at all, and if he hears them read he
should postpone hisverdict till the end. 3 I am well aware of their stubborn¬
ness, however; 2 our wish will never be achieved. They are scared that defeat
by us will compel them to yield in the end; the truth itself will cry out. 4 So
they make noisy interruptions to avoid hearing, and they cover up their eyes
to keep them from seeing the light we offer, plainly revealing in this their
lack of faith in their own hopeless system: they don't dare learn, and they
don't dare come to grips with us, because they know they are easy losers.

5 D ebate is thus rul ed out. A s E nni us says, 3 ' W isdom is driven forth, force
reigns i nstead'. A nd because they are keen to condemn as gui Ity people they
know very well areinnocent, they refuse to accept the innocence; to condemn
innocence proven would be even more unfair, no doubt, than to condemn it
unheard! 6 But, as I said, they are frightened that if they do listen they will

1 The first four chapters of this book are tantamount to a re-introduction to the whole work.

2 L. follows the strategy of earlier Christian apologists in throwing back at pagans charges
conventionally levelled at Christians. Forsuperstitio, see4.28.3ff.; for pertinacia, see Pliny, E p.
Tra. 10.96.

3 Ann. 263.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

notbeableto condemn: hence their torture, murder and banishment of those
who worship the supreme God, the just people, that is. Their hatred is so
strong that they cannot even account for it: 7 their loathing of those on the
true path is a measure of their own aberrance, and though they could put
themselves right by themselves, they heap up their confusions on top of their
cruelties, and go staining themselves with innocent blood, wrenching from
disembowelled bodies hearts given to God. 8 These are the people we now
want to grapple with in argument, and to guide from a stupid belief to the
truth, these people who find the blood of just men more palatable than their
words.

9 So: shall we be wasting our time? Not at all. Even if we cannot win
them back from a death they speed towards, nor restore them to life and light
from their deviations (they are fighting against their own salvation), at least
we shall strengthen those of our own folk whose understanding is wobbly
and not firmly based on solid foundations.

Most people waver, especially those of any attainment in literature. 4
10 Philosophy, oratory and poetry are all pernicious for the ease with which
they ensnare incautious souls in beguiling prose and the nice modulations of
poetical flow. 11 They are honey, hiding poison, and that is why I wish to
combine wisdom with religion, so that all that empty learning is no
obstruction to enthusiasts, and the scholarship of letters not only does no
harm to religion and justice but actually assists them as far as possible -
provided the scholar of literature becomes more learned in the virtues and
wiser in the truth. 12 Besides, even if it benefits no one else, it will benefit
me: my conscience will rejoice, and my mind will be glad to be working in
the light of truth, which is the food of the soul and steeped in unbelievable
delight. 13 This is no case for despair, of course; perhaps'we sing not to the
deaf’. 5 Things are not so bad - or else unclean spirits have more licence than
the holy spirit - that sound minds do not exist to take pleasure in truth and to
seeandfollow the right path onceitisshownthem. 14 Simply rimthecupof
wisdom with honey from heaven, 6 so that bitter medicine can be drunk
unawares with no hostile reaction: the initial sweetness beguiles, and the

4 A hint that L. is targeting doubting Christians, not only confirmed pagans, among the
educated classes.

5 Verg. Eel. 10.8.

6 The image first occurs in Plato, Lg. 659e-660a: legislators dealing with poets are
compared with doctors who give children medicine disguised as 'food and drink to enjoy’. As
L.’s words show, however, it was Lucretius (1.936ff., repeated at 4.11ff.) who made it
memorable. Quintilian (Inst. 3.1.4) confirms Lucretius' success.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

283

harshness of the bitter flavour is concealed beneath the covering of
sugar.

15 This is the principal reason why holy scripture lacks the trust of the
wise, 7 both scholars and princes of this world: its prophets have spoken to
suit ordinary folk, in plain and ordinary language; 16 they thus earn the
contempt of people who will not read or hear anything not polished and
eloquent. Nothing sticks in such people’s minds unless it soothes their ears
with its smoothness, and anything seeming coarse they think is stuff for old
women, stupid and vulgar. 17 Anything rough on the ears they assume is
untrue, and nothing is credible unless it provides aesthetic pleasure; they
weigh by garb and not by truth. 18 Hence their disbelief in God's word,
because it wears no make-up, and the disbelief extends to its interpreters,
because they are not educated men, or only slightly so, themselves, and it is
exceedingly rare for such people to have good powers of expression. The
reason is obvious. 19 Eloquence serves this world; it likes a public to show
off to and to please with its mischief, since it often tries to oust the truth to
prove its own effectiveness; it seeks out wealth, it covets distinction, and it
demands top place in public esteem. 20 Hence its contempt for this humble
stuff of ours, and its flight from mysteries that seem to oppose it: it likes
publicity, of course, and looks for crowds to throng around it; 21 wisdom
and truth in consequence have no proper champions, and scholars who came
to their rescue were inadequate to defend them. 8

22 Among those known to mein this capacity, one notable advocate was
M inucius Felix. 9 His book, called Octavius, makes plain how good a vindi¬
cation of truth he could have made if he had devoted himself totally to the
subject. 23 Septi mi us T ertul Man 10 also had skill in every sort of writing, but
his eloquence was uneven, and he was rather rough and not at all lucid: even
he failed to win enough publicity. 24 The only one of real distinction was

7 The problem is the medium: Christian literature does not appeal because it lacks
eloquence and polish; cf. 3.1-3 below, and 6.21.4-5.

8 The list which follows of L.'s predecessors omits, notoriously, A rnobius of Sicca Veneria
in North Africa. Arnobius was L.’s teacher, and composer of Against the Nations, a work of
Christian apologetic in seven books. It has been thought that this omission was deliberate, but
if Arnobius’ work was composed around the same time as this work and in Africa, L. may not
have known of it.

9 M inuci us Felix flourished in the first third of the 3rd century (after T ertul li an and before
Cyprian). African by birth, he was an advocate at the Roman bar. He wrote Octavius in clear and
direct imitation of Cicero.

10 Tertullian wrote works of Christian theology, morality and apologetic in the reigns of
Septimius Severus and Caracalla (datable works are between 196/7 and 212).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

thus Cyprian: 11 he won himself considerable fame as a professor of rhetoric,
and he also wrote a great deal worth admiring for itself. 25 He had an easy
talent, a sweet flow of words, and (the greatest of virtues in exposition) he
was clear; you could nottell with him whether elegance of language, success
in explanation or power of persuasion came first. 26 Beyond a power of
words, however, Cyprian cannot go in satisfying those who do not know
God’s sacred mystery, because what he spoke of is both mystical and pre¬
pared for the ears of the faithful alone. Scholars of this world who become
acquainted with his writings usually mock them. 27 I have heard of one,
certainly a man of eloquence, who changed one letter and called him
Coprian, 12 on the grounds that he employed on old wives’ tales a literary
talent that deserved better. 28 If that can happen to a man of some charm
with words, what can we think is the fate of those whose prose is thin and
ugly, who have never had an ability to persuade in them, or a skill in argu¬
mentation, or even a power of plain rebuttal?

The opposition: a philosopher and a judge

21 We have thus not had scholars of adequate expertise to undo popular
error with energy and precision, and to plead the whole case for truth in
choice and fluent fashion, and this deficiency has been taken by some as a
good chance to try their pens against a truth they do not understand. 2 I omit
those who attacked to no avail in earlier times; I quote my experience in
Bithynia, where i had been invited to teach rhetoric. 13 It happened that a
temple of God was reduced to rubble, 14 which caused a pair of people to jeer
at the utter prostration of truth; whether their mockery owed more to disdain
or perversity I cannot say.

3 One of them 15 cl aimed to be a spokesman for philosophy, but he was so
wicked in his ways, this professor of self-control, that he glowed with greed
no less than with lust, and so luxurious was his lifestyle that for all his
profession of virtue in school and for all his praise of thrift and poverty, his

11 Cyprian was a rhetor before his conversion. He was bishop of Carthage from 248/9, fled
the Decian persecution (250) and was martyred in that of Valerian; he died in September 258.
N umerous treatises and a considerable corpus of letters survive.

12 Kopros isthe Greek for dung.

13 A rare autobiographical detail.

14 Cf. de mort. pers. 12.5.

15 He is thought to be Porphyry, but is probably not; L. perhaps conceals his name to reduce
his substance. Seep. 2.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

285

di nner at home was better than di nner at the pal ace. N evertheless he masked
his vices under his long hair and Greek gown, and (best mask of all) under
his wealth, and to increase his wealth he would go to remarkable lengths to
make friends with the judiciary; using the prestige of his bogus title he
would suddenly put them under an obligation to him, not just in order to
trade their verdicts, but also, using this power of his, to stop his neighbours
from recovering lands and homes from which he was expelling them. 4 At
the same ti me as the j ust peopl e were bei ng w i ckedly persecuted, this fel I ow
ruined his arguments by his own behaviour, or alternatively, exposed his
behaviour by his own arguments (he was his own worst critic and fiercest
prosecutor): he spewed out three volumes attacking the name and faith of
Christians, 5 claiming that 'it was the philosopher's pre-eminent duty to
rescue people from error and to redirect them to the true path, to worship of
the gods, that is, by whose superior power the world was governed; he would
not let the inexperienced be taken in by certain persons’ frauds in case
honesty should become prey and provender for the clever; 6 he had therefore
taken on this task, a task very proper to philosophy, of presenting the light of
wisdom to non-beholders, not simply for them to resume worship of the
gods and so regain their health, but also to have them drop their determined
refusal of it, escape physical torture and abandon their willingness to endure
ferocious bodily pains to no purpose.' 7 To clarify why this task had so
absorbed his efforts, he launched into praise of the emperors 'whose piety
and foresight', to quote his own words, 'had been revealed most notably
in their defence of worship of the gods; for the good of mankind they
had eventually decided to control a wicked and maudlin superstition in order
to free all people for legitimate religion and the experience of divine
goodwill.’

8 His wish to undermine the logic of the faith he was speaking against
turned him, however, into a laughing-stock for folly and incompetence. Our
worthy and altruistic adviser simply did not know what he was saying, never
mind what he was attacking. 9Any of ourfolk there would wink to meet the
occasion, but in their own minds they laughed to see the fellow claiming he
would enlighten others when he was the blind one, he would rescue others
from error when he didn't know himself where he was putting his own feet,
and he would teach others the truth when he had never seen a single spark of
the stuff himself, being a professor of wisdom whose every effort was all
aimed atwasting it. 10 As everyone else pointed out, he chose the moment to
launch his attack when a loathsome bout of cruelty was raging. What a
fawning, time-serving philosopher! 11 He earned the contempt his self-

286

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

conceit deserved in failing to win the thanks he hoped for, and the infamy he
did achieve turned into reproach and disapproval.

12 The other man 16 wrote similarly, but more caustically; he was at the
time one of the judiciary, and a prime mover of the persecution, but not
content with that crime he even pursued his victims with his pen. 13 He
wrote a pair of pamphlets, not 'against' the Christians, to avoid seeming too
hostile in his attack, but 'to' them, to give the impression of a humane and
kindly adviser. In them he attempted to prove the falsity of holy scriptureon
the basis that it entirely contradicted itself. 14 In listing certain headings
which gave the semblance of self-contradiction, he laid them out in such
intimate detail that it looked in the end as if he had once been one of our
persuasion. 15 If he was so, then even Demosthenes will be incapable of
defending him on a charge of impiety, since he has turned traitor to the
religion that inspired him, traitor to the faith whose name he adopted, and
traitor to the sacred mysteries he accepted - unless, of course, mere chance
had put the holy writings in his hands. 16 In which case, what a nerve, to
dare to undo what no one had explained to him - well, what he had either not
learnt or not understood. Self-contradiction is as remote from holy scripture
as he was from faith and truth, 17 and yet, he laid into Paul and Peter
especially, and into the other disciples, as 'disseminators of falsehood’,
claiming that they were also 'untrained and uneducated, 17 since some of
them made a living as fishermen’: was he put out because fishing had had no
commentary from an A ristophanes or an A ristarchus? 18

Scripture does not contradict itself; Christ was no magician

HSince Peter and Paul were uneducated, they clearly had neither the will
nor the wit for fiction. Alternatively, who without an education could put
together anything coherent and self-consistent when philosophers of great
learning, Plato and Aristotle, Epicurus and Zeno, could themselves produce
stuff that is self-contradictory and incompatible? Incoherence is the very
essence of falsehood, 2 but what the disciples have passed down to us

16 H e is to be identified withSossi anus Hierocles, governor of Bithynia. See Barnes (1976);
PIR 1 432.

17 An old charge against Christians; see Acts 4:13; Origen, c. Cels. 1.27, 29; 3.18, 44; etc.

18 A ristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257-180 BC) was head of the library of Alexandria from
c. 194, and a scholar of language, texts, literature and science. Aristarchus of Samothrace (c.
216-144) was also head librarian (from c. 153) and author of many critical editions, com¬
mentaries and treatises.

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squares on every side because it is true, being wholly consistent with itself,
and persuasive because it is based on sound reason. 3 They did not fabricate
this religion of ours for profit or advantage: after all, they followed a path of
life, for real as well as in theory, which eschews pleasure and despises all
that is commonly held to be good, and they not only endured death for their
beliefs, but also knew that they were going to die and said so quite openly,
saying also that all who followed their teaching would endure unspeakable
agonies after them.

4 'Christ himself,’ the fellow declared, 'when forced out by the Jews
gathered a band of 900 men and resorted to brigandage.' 5 Such authorita¬
tiveness! Unchallengeable! We had better accept it; perhaps it was vouch¬
safed him by some Apollo in a dream. Robbers have always perished in
plenty, and do so every day, and you yourself have passed sentence on many:
but which of them has been called 'man' after his crucifixion, never mind
'God'? 6 Presumably this belief of yours is based on the fact that you people
made a god out of the murderer M ars, which you'd never have done if the
court of the Areopagus had sentenced him to crucifixion!

7 W hen this fellow was pulling Christ's miracles to pieces and even so
couldn't deny them, nevertheless he tried to show that 'Apollonius did the
like, or even greater.' 19 (It is surprising he left out Apuleius, who tends to
come very high in the miracle count. 20 ) 8 So why does nobody worship
Apollonius as a god? You’re crazy - or are you out on your own perhaps, the
sort of fan such a so-called god deserves, and the true God will punish you
and him together for eternity?

9 If Christ was a magician 'because he did miracles', Apollonius was
simply cleverer'who', as you write, 'suddenly wasn'tthere in the courtroom
when Domitian wanted to punish him’, whereas Christ was both arrested
and crucified. 10 Ah, but he probably wanted to use Christ’s cl aim to be God
to contrast the outrageousness of Christ with the apparent modesty of Apol¬
lonius: though Apollonius did the greater miracles (so he thinks!), neverthe¬
less that was not his great claim.

Ill omit any comparison hereof their actual deeds, because I have dealt
with the deceptive illusions of magic in Books 2 and 4. 12 I say there is no

19 Apollonius of Tyana (1st cent. AD): his Life was written by Philostratus in c. 217.
Despite L., there were some who worshipped him. See Dio 77.18.4; SH A S. Al. 29.

20 Apuleius of Madauros in Numidia, author of The Golden Ass. He defended himself
against charges of magic in his Apologia c. 157. He is linked with Apollonius also in Aug. Ep.
136.1; 138.18.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

one who would not make it his first choice after death to have the same as
even the greatest ki ngs desire. 13 W hy do people prepare magnificent tombs
for themselves, and statues and portraits? W hy are they anxious to earn the
good opinion of others by glorious deeds, or even by dying for their fellow-
citizens? And why have you sought to establish this monument of your
intelligence - though it’s as revoltingly stupid as if it were made of mud -
unless you hope for immortality through remembrance of your name? 14 It
is stupid to think that Apollonius refused what he certainly wanted to have if
he could; there is nobody who would refuse immortality, especially when
you say 'he was also worshipped as a god by certain people, and a statue of
him, set up under the name of Hercules Averter of Evil, is honoured by the
people of Ephesus to this day.' 15 He could not betaken for a god after his
death because everyone agreed he had been a man and a magician, and he
tried for divine status under a name not his own because under his own he
neither could try nor dared to try. Our God, however, can betaken as God
because he was not a magician, and he is so taken because he was truly G od.
16 'I am not saying that Apollonius was not considered a god because he
refused to be’, says our fellow; 'I say itto reveal our own greater wisdom in
not instantly attaching to miraculous deeds a belief in their doer’s divinity.
You people, by contrast, have believed in a god on flimsy showings.' 17You
are so unacquainted with the wisdom of God! No wonder you understand
nothing of what you have read, when even the Jews, long practised in
reading the prophets and entrusted with God's sacred mystery, did not
understand what they were reading.

18 Please understand therefore, if you can manage it, that we do not
believe in him as God 'because he did miracles’, but because we have seen
accomplished in him all those things foretold us in the predictions of the
prophets. 19 'He did miracles’: we would have thought him a mere
magician, as you do now and as the Jews did at the time, had not all the
prophets predicted with one breath that he would do exactly so. 20 We think
of him as God, therefore, notfor his miraculous deeds and works but rather
for that cross, which you lick like dogs, because that too was one of the
predictions. 21 It is not therefore hi sown testimony that makes us believe in
his divinity - who can be believed when speaking of himself? - but the
testimony of the prophets, who uttered all that he did and suffered long
before the event.That is not something which could ever have happened to
Apollonius or Apuleius or any magician at all, nor can it.

22 After unloading himself I ike that with the delusions of his ignorance,
in his efforts to wipe out truth altogether he then had the nerve to label those

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

289

wicked and God-hating books of his G21 'Truth-loving'! 23 What blindness
of mind! Whata more than Cimmerian darkness (to quote)! Perhaps hewas
a student of Anaxagoras, and snow was ink for him. 22 And yet it is one and
the same blindness, to label falsehood truth and truth falsehood. Obviously
this trickster was intending to create a wolf in sheep's clothing, so that he
could ensnare the reader with a bogus title.

24 Never mind: you did it in ignorance, we will say, not in malice. So
what truth have you finally brought us, if not that in defending your gods you
have in the end been their betrayer? 25 In pressing the 'glorification of god
most high’, a god whom you claim to be 'king, the greatest, the maker of all
things, the source of good, father of all, creator and nourisher of living
things’, you have deprived yourj upiter of his kingship, you have driven him
from power and you have reduced him to the rank of servant. Thus your own
epilogue convicts you of stupidity, futility and error. 26 You declare that
there are gods, and yet you subject and enslave them to the God whose
worship you are trying to overthrow.

Previous defenders were inadequate

4.1When these two of whom I have spoken had set forth their wicked works
in my presence (and to my grief), I was stimulated to undertake this task, of
exposing their attack upon justice with all the intelligence I could, both by
my presumption of their impiety and by my awareness of the truth, and also,
as I believe, by God. M y aim in writing was not to put down people who
could be eliminated in a few words but to wipe out in one single attack all
those people everywhere who are attacking justice or who have done so.

2 I have no doubt that plenty of others in plenty of places have con¬
structed a record of their own injustice, not only in Greek but also in Latin.
Since I could not respond to them all individually, I decided I had to argue
my case in such a way that previous writers would be undone together with
all their works, and future writers would lose all opportunity of writing or of
replying themselves. They have only to give ear, and I can ensure that all
who think like that will either adopt what they previously condemned or
(which is much the same) will eventually leave off their scorn and derision.

3 A version of this was argued by TertulIian in his book called

21 G indicates that L. uses or quotes Greek.

22 Sextus, Pyrrh. 1.33 (DK 59A97): 'Anaxagoras used to oppose to the view that snow is
white the argument that snow is frozen water, water is black, and so snow is black.'

290

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Apologia; 23 even so, because there is a difference between merely respond¬
ing to attacks, when defence and denial is the sole form, and setting up
something new, 24 which is what I am doing, whenthefull doctrinal content 25
has to be in place, I have not shrunk from the labour of developing in full
material which Cyprian failed to develop in the speech where he tried to
refute Demetri anus' barking and barracking', as he put it, 'against the truth.’

4 He failed to exploit the material as he should have done, because Deme-
trianus should have been rebutted with arguments based in logic, and not
with quotations from scripture, which he simply saw as silly fiction and lies.

5 Since he was arguing against a man ignorant of the truth, Cyprian should
have kept his scriptural texts back a while; he should have given the fellow
some primary training, as if he were a beginner, showing him the elements
of illumination little by littleto avoid blinding him with all thelightatonce.

6 Children cannot take food in all its strength when their digestive powers
are still weak; they are nourished instead with milk, which is liquid and
bland, until their powers develop and they can feed on stronger stuff: 26 so
Demetri anus should first have been offered men's evidence since he could
not yet take God’s evidence, the evidence of philosophers and historians, that
is; then he could be refuted as far as possible by authorities which he himself
acknowledged. 7 Cyprian failed to do this because he was swept aw ay by his
ow n remarkabl e know I edge of di vi ne I i terature; i ndeed, he w as content w i th
only those things which are the substance of our faith. Hence my own
approach to the task, under the inspiration of God, and my approach also to
preparation of a path forothersto follow. 8 If men of learning and eloquence
begin to muster at my encouragement, willing to engage their talents and
powers of utterance on this battlefield of truth, then beyond all doubt false
religions will swiftly vanish and all philosophy will go down, provided only
that all are convinced that this is as much the only true wisdom as it is the
only religion. But I have strayed further from my path than I intended.

J ustice under Saturn expelled byJ upiter

5l1Now for the discussion of justice which I proposed. 27 J ustice is itself either
the supreme virtue or the source of virtue, 28 and I mean the virtue sought not

23 L. returns to the subject of the deficiencies of preceding apologists.

24 L.'s Latin picks up the title of his work: instituere, to set up.

25 Doctrinae totius substantiam: a kind of Summa Theologiae.

26 Cf. I Cor. 3:2; Hebr. 5:12.

27 The matter for discussion (disputatio) is the presence or absence of justice in the world.

28 Cf. Cic. Off. 3.2; elsewhere in L., 14.7 below; 3.22.5.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

291

only by the philosophers but also by the poets who preceded them, who had
a name for wisdom long before the word philosophy was born. 2 The poets
clearly understood that justice was remote from human activities, and they
created a story that it had fled the earth and migrated to heaven because it
was offended at people's wickedness. In order to explain what it is to live in
justice, they go back for examples of it - poets’ advice is usually given
obliquely - to the age of Saturn, the so-called golden age, and they tell of the
state in which human life existed when justice still dwelt on earth.

3 This is not to be treated as poetical fiction but as truth. W hen Saturn
was king, and worship of gods had notyet been instituted and no nation was
yet committed to a view of divine status, God was certainly being worship¬
ped. 29 4 Hence the lack of discord, and of enmity or war; 'Passion had not
yet bared the swords of madness', as Germanicus says in his translation of
Aratus [112-13], 'nor was discord known to kinsmen’, nor even between
different families; there simply were no swords to be bared at all. 5 in a
context where justice was thriving, who would think of protecting himself
when no one lay in wait for him, and who would think of another's ruin
when no one coveted anything? 'They preferred to live content with slender
means’, as Cicero says in his translation [Arat. 21]; that is a particular
feature of our religion, 'it was not even right to mark the land or portion it
with boundaries: all need was met in common' [Verg. G. 1.126-27]: 6 God,
after all, had given the land for all to share, so that life should be lived in
common, not so that a ravenous, raging greed should claim everything for
itself; what was produced for all should not be denied to any. 7 We are not to
take these poet’s words to mean that there was no private property at all in
those days; 30 they are rather a poetical image of people being so generous
that they did not fence off fruits of the earth as their own, nor did they stow
them away and sit on them; instead, they laboured themselves and also
allowed the poor a share of the harvest. 'Streams of milk were flowing now,
and streams of nectar too’ [Ovid, M et. 1.111], 8 and no wonder when the
storerooms of the just were open in goodwill to all, and the flow of God’s
bounty was not diverted by greed, causing hunger and thirst among the
people, but all were equally well off because abundant and generous giving
was done by those with to those without.

9 Once Saturn had been driven out by his son, however, and had landed

29 Itwasafeatureof L.’s Golden Age that God alone was worshipped. The end of his worship,
and the introduction of pagan deities, thus spelt the end of the Golden Age. Cf. 6.2 below.

30 For L. on private property, see pp. 38-40.

292

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

up in Latium 'fleeing the weapons of J upiterand in exile, his kingdom stolen’
[Verg. A. 8.320], and the people left off worshipping God, whether for fear
of the new king or from a natural depravity, and began to treat the king as
God, and the king himself, a virtual parricide, was a model for the abuse of
piety to everyone else, then 'swiftly the lady of justice left the earth’ [Germ.
Arat. 137], but she did not, as Cicero says [Arat. 23], 'settle in Jupiter’s
kingdom in a region of the sky.’ 10 How could she settle or abide in the
kingdom of someone who had driven his own father out of it, waging war
against him and harrying him in his exile all over the earth? 'He put the evil
poison in black snakes, and bid the wolves go hunt’ [Verg. G. 1.129-30]; that
is, Jupiter put envy, hatred and cheating into human beings so that they
should be as venomous as snakes and as rapacious as wolves. 11 That is
exactly the performance of those who persecute the just, the people loyal to
G od, and give I icence to j udges to treat the i nnocent with savagery. 12 Perhaps
J upi ter did that sort of thing to drive out justice and abolish it, and that is why
he is recorded to have sent snakes mad and to have sharpened wolves. 'Then
came the savageness of war, and love of owning’ [Verg. A. 8.327] -
deservedly. 13 For once the worship of God was gone, 'knowledge of good
and evil' [Gen. 2:17] was lost as well. The communality of life dropped
away, and the social contract was undone. 14 Then people began to fight
with each other, and to plot, and to seek their self-esteem in human blood.

J upiter instals the apparatus of injustice

6.1T he source of all these evils is greed, 31 and greed presumably erupted out
of contempt for the true superior power. Not merely did people of any
prosperity fail to share with others, but they also seized the property of
others, diverting everything to private gain, and what had previously been
worked even by individuals for the benefit of everyone was now piled up in
the houses of a few.

2 To reduce the rest to servitude, they began first to withdraw the
necessities of life, gathering them in and keeping them firmly locked up, so
that the bounty of heaven became their bounty, not from any humanitarian
impulse - they felt none - but to rake in the means of avarice and greed for
themselves. 3 In the name of justice they authorised fortheirown purposes

31 Cupiditas and the closely allied auaritia (cf. 5.8 above) are regularly attacked by pagan
and Christian authors alike. See Cic. Tusc. 3.24; 4.11; Sen. Ep. 90.3, 36; I Tim. 6:10; Aug. civ.
19.1; etc.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

293

laws of great unfairness and injustice, by which they could protect their
greedy plunderings from mob violence. Their advantage thus came from
sheer position as much as it did from their muscle, money and malice, 4 and
since there was no trace at all in them of justice, whose due expression is
fairness, kindness and pity, 32 the inequality they now rejoiced in swelled
their sense of superiority; they raised themselves above the rest with trains
of henchmen, weaponry and special dress. 5 Hence their invention of office
for themselves, and purpleand maces: they could use the threat of sword and
axe to lord it over a cowed and petrified people with all the authority of a
tyrant. 33

6 That was the state of human life under king J upiter: when he had
conquered his father in war and put him to flight, it was no kingship he then
exercised but an impious tyranny, of violence and armies; the golden age of
justice he removed, forcing people into evil and impiety precisely by turning
them away from truth and diverting them from worshipping God to wor¬
shipping him, such was the terror produced by his extraordinary power. 7Who
would not be scared of a man girt about with weapons, or ringed with the
unprecedented gleam of iron swords? What stranger would be spared by a
man who had not spared his own father? W ho could alarm a man who had
conquered the sturdy race of Titans in war, a people of outstanding strength,
and then murdered them out of existence? 8 Can we be surprised if a whole
people under pressure of exceptional panic gave way to adulation of a single
individual? All their veneration and highest regard went to him. 9And since
imitation of a king's misbehaviour passes for a species of obedience, they all
abandoned their piety, in case by living so they might seem to disapprove of
their king’s badness. 10 The constant imitation thus corrupted them; they left
off what God sanctioned, and little by little a habit of evil living became the
custom. Nothing now survived of the previous generation's piety and
excellence: justice had been driven away, and taking truth with her she left
the human race to error, ignorance and blindness.

11 The poets had thus got it wrong in saying justice had fled to the
kingdom of Jupiter. If justice was on earth in the age they call golden, then
quite simply it was driven out by J upiter: he ended the golden age. 12 But
ending the golden age and driving out justice has to be seen, as I said, as the
abandonment of worship of God, which is the only cause of humans cherishing

32 An early (and incomplete) description of justice; piety issoon added (6.10 and 7.2 etc.).

33 Institutions and symbols of magisterial authority in Rome are here provocatively
associated with the power of a king or slave owner (here dominus; tyrannus and rex are
sometimes also used).

294

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

one another and of knowing the bond of brotherhood that binds them: since
God is 'father equally to all' [Lucr. 2.992], so people are to share with those
denied it the bounty of the God and father whom they all share, harming
none, oppressing none, shutting their doors to no caller and their ears to no
entreaty, but being 'generous, bountiful, liberal: which is the glory of a king’,
as Cicero thought [Deiot. 26], 13 That is what justice really means; that is
the golden age. B ut it went wrong at the outset of J upiter’s reign, and when
he and all his family were deified and worship of many gods ensued, it was
soon all gone.

J ustice returns for the few, and evil remains to test them

7.1God is like a most indulgent parent, however: when the latter days were
approaching, 34 he sent a messenger to restore that time long gone and to
bring back justice from exile, so that mankind should be wracked no more
by its huge and persistent errors. 2 Back came the golden age in its beauty,
and justice - which is nothing other than pious and worshipful attention to
the one and only God - was restored to earth, though few were given it. 3 If
that is what justice is, however, some may perhaps bepuzzled why it was not
granted to the whole human race and why people were not all united in
accepting it. That is matter for a long debate: when God putjustice back on
earth, why was difference kept? I have given an explanation elsewhere, and
the explanation will continue to be given wherever good occasion arises. 35
4 For the moment, a very brief exposition will suffice: virtue either cannot be
seen without the contrast of vice or is not perfected without the test of
adversity.

5 That is the gap that God wanted to have between good and bad, so that
we may know the quality of good from bad and likewise of bad from good:
the nature of the one cannot be understood if the other i s not there too. W hen
about to restore justice, God did not exclude evil, in order that a reason for
virtue could be constructed. 6 How could endurance 36 sustain its name and
meaning if there were nothing we were forced to endure? How could a
faithful devotion to God win praise unless there were someone with a
purposeof turning us away from God? He deliberately let the unjust have the
advantage of power so that they could try to force us to evil, and he let them

34 L.'s chronology of the end of the world is set out in 7.14.11.

35 See 2.17.1; 3.29.13-16; with 22.1-10 below and 6.15, 20.

36 Patientia, in time of persecution the defining Christian virtue. See 13.11ff., 22.2-3;
6.18.19, 30; and pp. 28-29.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

295

have the advantage of numbers so that virtue should be prized for its rarity.

This is precisely what Quintilian showed so well and briefly in his Covered
Head. 37 7 'What sort of virtue would innocence be’, he says, 'unless its
rarity gave it value? But because things are naturally so organised that hatred,
greed and anger drive men blindly to what they covet, it seems superhuman
to be free of fault. On the other hand, if nature had given everybody similar
impulses, piety would mean nothing.' 8 The truth of this is shown by the very
inevitability of the logic. If virtue is a sturdy resistance to vice and evil, then
it is obvious that without some vice and evil there is no virtue. God preserved
its contrary for it to wrestle with to give it the chance of achieving perfection:
9 it arrives at stability when battered by the blows of evil, and the frequency
of the assaults is the measure of its firmness and solidity. 10 This is no doubt
the reason why, despite the despatch of justice to earth, the existence of a
golden age cannot be claimed: God sustained evil in order to sustain differ¬
ence, which is the only context for the sacred mystery of divine worship.

J ustice cannot reign in the presence of false religion

&1 People who think that no just man exists have justice in front of their
eyes but will not see it. Why is it that in their poetry and in all their prose they
depict it by lamenting its absence, even though it would be very easy for
people to be good if they wished? 2 Why picture a justice for yourselves
which is impossible? Why hope for it to fall from heaven, like something
statue-shaped? Look: it's well within your sights! Adopt it if you can, and
house it in your hearts; do not think it difficult, or alien to the times. 3 Be fair
and be good, and the justice you seek will attend you of its own accord. Drop
all evil thoughts from your hearts, and the golden age will return to you at
once; but you cannot have it back unless you start to worship the true God.

4 You people want justice on earth in the middle of worship of gods,
which is utterly impossible. It was utterly impossible even in the circum¬
stances you think it was possible in; before the birth of those gods you
worship with such impiety, worship of oneGod existed on earth necessarily.
I mean of course the God who curses wickedness and demands goodness,
whose temple is not stone and mud, but man himself who bears the form of
God, and that temple is not furnished with the evanescent gifts of gold and
jewelry butwith the eternal endowment of the virtues. 5 Use your surviving
intelligence, then, and understand that people are bad and unjust because

37 [Quint.] decl. fr. (Ritter pref. llln).

296

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

they worship gods, and evil grows daily more heavy on human affairs
because God, creator and controller of this world, has been neglected and
religions of impiety have been adopted contrary to what is right, and lastly
because you do not even allow worship of God, or only to a few.

6 If one God were worshipped, there would be no discord and no war;
people would know that they were children of the one God and so were
bound together by a holy, inviolable chain of divine kinship; there would be
no secret plots, since they would know what sort of penaltiesGod had ready
for those who kill the soul: he perceives their covert wickedness, and even
their very thinking; there would be no treachery and theft if they had learnt
from God’s advice and were 'content with what they had, however small’
[Cic. Off. 1.70], so that things solid and permanent had preference over
things fragile and fleeting; 7 there would be no adultery or other wrongful
intercourse, and no prostitution of women, if everybody knew that God
condemns all lustful appetite beyond procreation; no need would force a
woman to profane her honour and seek a loathsome living, since men would
contain their lust and people of means would contribute to those without as
in religion duly bound. 8 All these evils, as I have said, would thus not exist
on earth if everyone took an oath in the name of God’s law, if all people did
what only our people do.

How blessed and how golden the state of humanity would be if all the
world were civilised, pious, peaceful, innocent, self-controlled, fair and faith¬
ful! 9Therewould be no need for so many different laws for the government
of mankind, because the one law of God would be enough for the accom¬
plishment of innocence, nor would there be need for prisons and warders'
swords, nor for the threat of punishment, since the wholesomeness of
heavenly commandment 38 would be working in human hearts, forming them
freely to the practice of justice.

10 A sit is, people are bad from ignorance of what is right and good. That
is what Cicero saw. In discussion of the laws he says 39 'J ust as the world is
of one and the same nature, and coheres in and depends on all its parts in
their mutual congruence, so all mankind is naturally compact of itself but in
discord by depravity; peopledo not see that they shareone blood and they all
come under one and the same protective power; if that were grasped, they
would very soon be living the life of the gods’. 11 All the ills, therefore, with

38 Divine laws in L. are in competition with secular laws, which are also described as
salubres, health-giving, asin Not. Dig. 12.1 (ed. Seeck p. 34).

39 Cic. Leg. fr.2 (Ziegler, leg.).

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

297

which the human race exhausts itself in every generation are brought on by
the injustice and impiety of worshipping gods. Piety simply could not be
sustained by people who, like prodigal and rebellious children, had denied
God’s common fatherhood of them all.

Thejustare not recognised as such, but are persecuted

ftlSometimes, however, people feel their wickedness; they praise the way
things were in times past, and conclude in the light of their own behaviour
and worth that j ustice has gone. A nd though justice is there before thei r eyes,
they not only fail to adopt and acknowledge it but even hate and persecute it
energetically, striving to driveitout. 2 Let us imagine for a moment that the
justice we pursue is not justice: what will be their reception of the justice
they think true if it ever arrives, when they maim and murder the very people
whom they themselves admit to be models of it because of their good works
and thei r deeds of j ustice? I f they ki I led only the wieked, they might deserve
not to have justice come among them: bloodshed was the only reason for
justice abandoning the earth in the first place. 3 But since they kill the pious
and treat supporters of justice as enemies, indeed, as even worse than
enemies, the neglect of them by justice is all the more deserved. Even though
they go for the lives, fortunes and children of the pious with fire and sword,
nevertheless, losers do get spared, and mercy has a place in war; alterna¬
tively, if savagery is the rule, the victims suffer merely death, or merely
enslavement. 4 Yet what is done to these people so ignorant of evildoing is
beyond description, and none are treated as more dangerous than those who
are the most innocent of all. It is outrageous that men so wicked talk of
justice when they outdo wild beasts in their ferocity, and lay waste God’s
peaceful flock 'like wolves hunting in a dark cloud, driven blindly by a
wicked belly rage'. 40 5 But in the case of these men, it is no belly rage but
heart rage that maddened them: they don't go plundering 'in a dark cloud’
but in broad daylight, and no conscience about their crimes ever restrains
them from violating the pious and holy name of justice in language which
drips with the blood of the innocent like animals’ jaws.

6 W hat can we best claim as cause for this huge, persistent hatred? Is it
the case that 'truth gives birth to hatred’, as the poet says, 41 filled with some
divine inspiration, or do they blush to be so evil in the presence of the just

40 Verg. A. 2.355-57.

41 Ter. An. 68.

298

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and good, or is it both at once? Truth is often hated precisely because the
sinner wants ample space for his sinning, reckoning he cannot have a com¬
fortable enjoyment of his misdeeds unless they have everyone's approval.
7 Hence their great efforts to be rid of those they see as witnesses to their
wickedness: they want such people out; they think of them as enemies as if
their own lives were being exposed; 8 why should anyone so unseasonably
good exist, to show up the world of corruption to reproach by the goodness
of their own lives? Why shouldn't everyone be equally bad, greedy, im¬
moral, adulterous, perjured, lustful and deceitful? Why not be rid of people
whose presence shames the evil doer? They don't browbeat the sinner
verbally, for they never say a word, but they do beat and belabour him by
their utterly different lifestyle: any dissent is plainly disapproval.

9 What is done to attack men is really no great surprise, since even
peopl e' establ i shed i n hope' 42 and w el I aware of G od have ri sen agai nst G od
himself for the same reason, and the just are pursued with the same
inevitability that destroyed the creator of justice himself. 10 So the harass¬
ment and torment goes on, and the forms of torture are refined; they think
that killing those they hate is no good unless their cruelty also toys with their
victims. 11 As for those who, for fear of pain or death or out of their own
perfidy, forswear the sacred mystery of heaven and consent to ruinous
sacrifices, they praise them and heap them with honours, to lure the rest on
by theirexample; 12 asforthosewho prize their faith highly and do notdeny
their worship of God, they lay into them with all of a butcher's energy, as if
they were thirsty for blood, and call them desperate men for having so little
care for their bodies, as if anything could be more desperate than twisting
and tearing apart a person you knew to be innocent. 13 That is the extent to
which persecutors have no shame at all at their complete lack of humanity:
they fling at the just the abuse that perfectly fits themselves, 14 calling them
impious, as if they themselves were pious and shrank from human blood; but
if they were to consider their own actions beside those of the people they
condemn as impious, they would quickly see what liars they are, and how
much more worthy themselves of all those things they say and do to attack
the good.

15 It is always men of theirs, not of ours, who beset the highways in
arms, who play pirate on the seas, or, if they cannot pillage openly, brew
poisons in secret; who kill a wife to have the dowry, ora husband to wed the
adulterer; who either strangle their own children or, if they are too pious for

42 Ps. 4:8 (Ps. 4:10 in theVulgate).

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that, expose them; 43 16 who fail to contain an incestuous lust for a daughter
or sister or mother, or a priestess; who conspire against country and fellow-
citizens; who even have no fear of the parricide’s sack; who commit
sacrilege and rob the temples of the gods they worship, and who (to mention
items that are trifling and commonplace) grab at legacies, plant false wills,
remove or shut out rightful heirs, trade their own bodies for sex; 17 who
forget what they were born for and vie with women for the lower berth, and
pol I ute and profane the holiest part of their own body against every sanction;
who slice off their genitals with swords, and all (which is worse) to be high
priests of a cult; 44 who have no respect even for their own lives but sell their
own souls to be wiped out in public; 45 who sit on the bench and either
condemn the guiltless for a bribe or dismiss the guilty scot-free; 46 who aim
at heaven itself with their magic spells, as if the earth could not contain their
evil. 18 These, i repeat, and worse than these are the crimes committed by
the worshippers of gods.

Amid all this great welter of crime, what space is there for justice? And
I offered only a few examples out of many, to make my point merely, not to
prove it. 19 Anyone who wants to know the full tale should pick up the works
of Seneca, who was a very accurate depictor, as well as a relentless hound, of
public misbehaviour. 20 Lucilius has also described that dark sort of life
neatly and briefly in these verses: 'As it is, from dawn to dusk, workday or
holy day, all the people and senators all mill around in the forum, never
leaving it, all of them devoted to one and the same passion: the art, that is, of
swapping insults as cannily as they can, sparring sly, flattering competi¬
tively, aping the good man, laying traps, as if all were against all.’ 47 21 None
of this can serve as objection against our people: our whole religion is to live
without stain of wrongdoing.

22 Since they can see that they and their sort behave as we have said
while our people practise only what is fair and good, 48 they could perceive

43 Cf. 6.20.18-25 with note ad loc.

44 These are the Galli, priests of the Great M other. See 1.17.7n.

45 L. has in mind gladiators; cf. Epit. 58.4, where they are mentioned explicitly.

46 L. is uncomplimentary towards judges; see also 6.20.16, on the bringing of a capital
charge as an act of attempted murder.

47 Lucil. fr.1145-51 (Warmington) = H 41 (Charpin) = 1228-34 (M arx).

48 L.'s aequum et bonum evokes the introduction of Ulpian's Institutes cited in Digest
1.1.1.1: 'ius est ars boni et aequi.. boni et aequi notitiam profitemur' (Justice is the art of
goodness and fairness., we profess knowledge of goodness and fairness). For L., Christianity,
embodying divine law, represents a new, more perfect justice. For U Ipian see note on 11.19
below.

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from this, if they had any sense, that those who do good are the pious and
they themselves are the impious, for doing wrong. 23 It is impossible that
those who do no wrong in any action of their lives should go wrong in its
most important act - in religion, that is, which is chief of all things. If
impiety were adopted in what is the most important thing, it would spread
through everything else without exception. 24 It is correspondingly impossible
that people who go wrong in all the rest of their lives are not wrong in
religion as well, for in sustaining its standard in the most important thing,
piety would also preserve its pattern of conduct in everything else. Thus it
comes about that the nature of the whole itself can be learnt from the state of
affairs in existence on each side.

Pagan piety exposed

10.X11 is worth while getting to know their sort of piety, so that from what
they do in kindness and piety we can understand the nature of what they do
against the rules of piety. 49 2 To avoid the impression that I’m going in for
crude abuse, let me adopt a person from poetry to be the perfect example of
piety. 3 What lessons in justice does that king inVergil present? 'Neverwas
a man more just, more pious, or more adept in warlike arts' [A. 1.544-40],
'M anacled captives there were, consigned to be gifts to the dead, victims
whose blood would besprinkled on the altar flames’ [11.81-82], 4Whatcan
be kinder than that pious deed, sacrificing human victims to the the dead and
feeding fire with human blood as if it were oil? 5 But perhaps that was not
the hero’s fault but the poet’s: he besmirched a hero 'of spectacular piety’
[1.10] with that spectacular crime. So where is the piety, mister poet, which
you praise so very often? Behold the'pious Aeneas’: 'Now he captured alive
four warrior sons of Sulmo and four whom Ufens had reared, designing to
sacrifice them to the ghost of Pallas and to sprinkle his funeral pyre with the
blood of these captive youths’ [10.517-20], 6 So why did he say, at the very
same moment that he was despatching them in chains to be sacrificed,
'Believe me, I'd like to have made peace with the living’ [11.111], when he
was ordering living people, whom he had in his power, to be killed like
cattle? 7 But, as I said, it wasn't Aeneas' fault: he probably hadn't learnt his
ABC; it was your fault. You had an education, and yet you did not know

49 After claiming aequitas for Christianity, L. does the same for pietas, the other primary
element in justice as he defines it. These two virtues feature most commonly among the virtues
of emperors on denarii between 69 and 235.

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what piety was; you believed that what he did, so wickedly and so horribly,
was an act of piety. People call him pious for one reason only, I take it, that
he loved his father. 8 What about 'the good Aeneas' murdering people who
'were making prayers that deserved his regard’ [11.106]? When he was
begged in his own father’s name, and by his 'hopes of upspringing lulus'
[7.523], he showed no mercy at all, 'inflamed with wrath and madness'
[12.946], 9 Could anyone think he had a particle of virtue in him, when he
blazed in frenzy like stubble, unable to bridle his wrath, forgetting the spirit
of his father, in whose name he was entreated? Not pious, then, no way: he
killed not only those who yielded without resistance but even those who
prayed to him.

10 At this point someone will say, W hat then is piety? W here is it? W hat
is it like? it exists where people know nothing of wars, live in concord with
all, are friendly even to enemies, love all men like brothers, know how to
curb their anger and how to soothe all strong emotions with a tranquillising
control. 50 11W hat then must be the darkness, the cloud of gloom and error,
which blocks the hearts of those who become perfectly impious exactly
when they think they are perfectly pious? The more devotedly they serve
these earthly images of theirs, the more criminally they stand out against the
name of true divinity. 12 in reward for their impiety they are often tormented
by nastier troubles, and because they don’t know the reason for it, they
ascribe all the blame to luck, and then Epicurus’ philosophy comes in: he
thought the gods beyond reach, untouched by gratitude and unmoved by
anger, because they behold those who scorn them often prosperous and
those who worship them often in misery. 13 This occurs because, religious
as these people are and good by nature, they are not thought to deserve the
sort of thing that often happens to them. They console themselves, however,
by blaming Lady Luck, not realising that if she existed she would never hurt
her flock. 14 Piety of that sort earns its punishment rightly: offended by the
wickedness of people whose worship is all wrong, the godhead lands them a
painful surprise. They may be living a life of holiness in utter faith and
innocence, but because they worship gods, and the true God hates that
profane and impious ritual, they remain strangers to justice and to the name
of true piety.

15 It is not difficult to explain why worshippers of gods cannot be good
and just. W hen they worship gods of blood like M ars and B el Iona, how will

50 A strong statement against war and all public and private violence, which are found to be
incompatible with the worship of God (which is piety).

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they keep from blood themselves? How will they be merciful to their parents,
given Jupiter who drove out his father, or to their own children, given
Saturn? How will they maintain their modesty when they worship a goddess
who is naked and adulterous, the prostitute of Olympus? 16 How will they
keep from robbing and cheating when they know the thefts of M ercury, who
proves that deceit is not a matter of fraud but of cleverness? How will they
curb their sex-drive when they venerateJ upiter, Hercules, Bacchus, Apollo
and all those others whose rapes and adulteries against men and women are
not just known to scholars but are acted out in theatres and put into songs, so
that everybody knowsthemall the better? 17 How can they possibly bejust
people amid all this? Even if they were born good, they would be brought up
to injustice, precisely by those gods. To please the god you worship you need
what you know makes him happy and joyful. 18 Thus it is that a god shapes
thelifeof his worshippers after thenatureof hisown spirit; the most devoted
worship that exists is imitation.

Pagans, following the example of their gods, are vicious

ILlThese people who so match the behaviour of their gods find justice to
be a harsh and bitter thing: hence they practise against the just, with great
violence, that same impiety of theirs that they exercise on everything else.
The prophets were quite right to call them animals.

2 Cicero put it well: 'If there is no one’, he says, 'who would not rather
die than be turned into some sort of animal, even though he kept his human
mind, imagine themisery of being in human form with a mind gone wild. In
my view, that would be as much more awful as mind is better than body.' 51
3 Animal form is thus despised by people of more than animal savagery
themselves, who are very glad to be born human when there is nothing
human about them except outward form and features. 4 What Caucasus,
what India, what Hyrcania ever reared animals as ghastly and as bloody?
Si nee the fury of wild animals works only to meet the needs of the belly and
quietens down as soon as hunger is satisfied, 5 the true beast is the one at
whose single command 'black blood is shed on every side; bitter grief and
panic are everywhere, and every form of death.’ 52 6 A fit description of this
great beast’s savagery is impossible; though its lair is in one place, yet the

51 This text is regularly assigned to Cic. Rep. 4.1.1. So Ziegler, rep. p. 107. M onat (1973) ad
loc. is sceptical. For a similar Idea, see Cic. Off. 3.82; Rep. 2.48; L. Op. Dei 1.11-13.

52 Verg. A. 11.646 and 2.368.

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ferocity of its ferrous teeth isatwork throughout the world, notjust pulling
humans limb from limb, but grinding uptheirvery bones and raving at their
ashes so that no place of burial even exists - as if the aim of those who
confessGod were to havelots of visits to their own tombs, rather than goto
God themselves! 7 What wildness is it, what madness and insanity, that has
denied light to the living and earth to the dead? Therefore I say, there is no
greater misery than that of people found or forced necessarily to be agents of
another’s madness, stooges obeying an impious command. 8 There was no
honour in it, no promotion of worth; it was man’s condemnation to butchery
and God's to eternal punishment. 9 What individuals have done all over the
world is beyond telling: how many volumes will it take to contain such an
infinite variety of cruelty? Given the opportunity, each man’s ferocity matched
his nature. 10 Some exceeded orders recklessly, out of excessive fright;
others did so because of their own peculiar hatred of the just; some acted
from a natural brutality of intent, and some to find favour and so to launch
themselves on a career to higher things; some plunged headlong into
massacre, like one individual in Phrygia, who burnt a whole community
together with their meeting-place. 53

11 The more cruel hewas, however, the more merciful heturnsoutto be.
The worst sort is a man who lulls you with a bogus appearance of mercy; the
butcher who decides to kill no one is the really harsh and cruel man. 12 It is
impossible to say how numerous and harsh the various tortures were that
judges of this sort invented to achieve what they intended. 13 But they don't
act like this simply to be able to boast that they put no innocent person to
death (I’ve heard some, boasting that in this respect their administration had
been bloodless); they act also in jealousy: either they themselves must not be
the losers, or Christians must not justify their proud claim to virtue. 14 All
they have in mind in thinking up the different torments is winning; they
know there's a contest on and a fight. 15 I have seen a governor in B ithynia
myself quite transported with joy, as if he had conquered some tribe of
barbarians, because one individual who had resisted with great virtue for
two years finally appeared to give way. 54 16 Hence their efforts to win, and
the extraordinary tortures they inflict, stopping short of nothing except the
death of their victims - as if death were the only way to bliss, and even
torture could not bring sufferers a glory in their virtue as great as the torture
was hideous. 17 in their resolute stupidity they give instructions for their

53 See Euseb. H ist. Eccl. 8.11.1.

54 This detail points to the composition of this book c. 305.

304

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

victims to be carefully tended, so that their limbs are restored for further
torture and fresh blood is there for punishment. What treatment can be as
pious, as kind and humane as that? They could not have tended their own
loved ones with such care.

18 And that is what gods teach: those are the works they train their
worshippers for, and that is the sacrifice desired. Why, even the most
criminal of murderers have constructed impious laws against the pious:
legislation can be read which is sacrilegious, and lawyers' debateswhich are
unjust. 19 Domitius 55 in book 7 of his Duty of a Governor gathered some
outrageous imperial rescripts in order to show what penalties it was proper
to apply to those who declared their worship of God.

B ut truth with suffering is always preferable to prosperous evil

321 What are you to do with people who call it law when elderly tyrants
turn butcher and go rabid against the innocent? They are teachers of injustice
and cruelty, and yet they want to seem just and wise 56 when they are blind
and stupid, and ignorant of facts and truth. 2 Is justice something you hate so
much, you poor lunatics, that you set it on a par with the greatest of crimes?
Is innocence so dead among you that you think it undeserving of even a
simple death, and that confessing to no crime and presenting a soul clean of
all contagion is to be counted the crime above all crimes?

3 Since this is a mutual discussion with you worshippers of gods, permit
us to do you a service. It is our law, our task and our religious duty to do so.
If you think us wise, copy us; if foolish, reject us, or even mock us if you
will: our folly is to our advantage. 4 Why torture us? W hy harass us? We are
not jealous of your wisdom: we prefer this folly of ours, we embrace it, we
think it does us good to love you and to offer you all we have, yes, you, the
very people who hate us.

5 There is a passage in Cicero [Rep. 3.27] not too far from the truth, in
the disputation of Furius against justice. 57 'I have a question', he says: 'if
there were two men, of whom one was an excellent man, very fair, utterly

55 Domitius U Ipianus from Tyre, jurisconsult, was a leading civil servant under the Severan
dynasty, holding the pretori an prefecture, but not for long (222-23) before he was assassinated.
His juristic works makeup about one sixth of the Digest of J ustinian. The treatise named in the
text is largely lost.

56 Prudentes, i.e, jurisconsults, to whom allusion is made in 1.1.12.

57 D. Furius Philus (cos. 140 BC) is given the task of arguing the case for injustice in
Cicero's Republic. See 14.3ff. below.

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just, especially loyal, and the other a man noted for his outrageous wicked¬
ness, and if their community were in such confusion that it thought the good
man to be a wicked and nefarious criminal, while it reckoned that the actual
villain was a man of the utmost probity and trustworthiness, and if in
accordance with this conclusion of all citizens the good man were harassed
and seized, his hands cut off, his eyes put out, he himself condemned,
imprisoned, branded, cast out, impoverished, 6 and everyone concluded that
he was quite rightly in such depths of suffering, whereas the wicked fellow
were praised and flattered, loved by all, and all positions of authority civil
and military together with all financial resources were bestowed on him by
everyone, and in conclusion he were judged to be the best of men and
thoroughly worth all his fortune: who so mad then as to doubt which one he
would rather be?' 7 When he posed his model, Furius must have guessed
what evils would come upon us, and how, because of justice. This is what
our peoplesuffer, all of it due to the wickedness of people confused. 8 Here
is our country, or rather, the whole wide world, in such a state of confusion
that it persecutes good and just men, and does so as if they were evil and
impious, torturing, condemning and killing them. 9 W hen Furius says that
no one is so mad as to hesitate which he’d rather be, he at least, qua speaker
against justice, has realised that a wise man would rather be bad and well
esteemed than good and poorly thought of. 10 We, however, must put away
this madness of preferring false to true. The quality of our good is not to be
measured by people all astray, but by our own consciences and the judgment
of God, and no happy moment should ever lure us away from preferring real
goodness with all ill over a false goodness with all prosperity. 11 'Let kings
secure their kingdoms and wealthy men their wealth', as Plautus says [Cur.
178]; and let prudent men secure their prudence: let them leave us ourfolly,
which is plainly wisdom anyway, to judge by how they envy us for it. 58 12 No
one would envy a fool unless he were an absolute fool himself. They,
however, are not so foolish as to envy fools: by their precise and energetic
persecution of them they acknowledge they are not fools. 13 Why would
they act so savagely unless they are scared of being left behind with their
own decaying gods asjusticegrowsstronger day by day? If the worshippers
of gods are wise and wearefoolish, why should they worry thatthewisewill
be duped by fools?

58 The distinction between prudentia and sapientia, prudence and wisdom, is important:
prudentia as Furius uses it means good sense, or acting in one's own interest; only sapientia
stands for wisdom.

306

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Religion is boosted by persecution

UlSinceour numbers are always being supplemented by ex-worshippers
of gods, and the numbers never go down even in a time of persecution -
peoplecan sin, after all, and bemadeunclean by sacrifice, but they cannot be
distracted from God, since truth has its own power to prevail - who can
remain so mindless and so blind as not to see which side wisdom is on?

2 Worshippers of gods are made blind by malice and rage. The fools in
their estimation are those who, having it in their power to avoid torture,
nevertheless prefer to be tortured and to die; albeit they could perceive from
that very fact that something which has the unanimous consent of so many
thousands of people all over the world is not a piece of folly. 3 If women
waver, from the weakness of their sex - from time to time our faith is maligned
as a womanish superstition, fit for grannies - men at least have sense; if
children and adolescents think in the short term because of their age, at least
adults and the elderly have stable judgment; 4 if a single community loses its
wits, all the countless others surely cannot be fools; if one whole province,
or one whole nation, runs out of sense, all the others are bound to retain their
understanding of right. 5 But now that God's law has been adopted from the
rising of the sun to its setting, and now that every sex, every generation,
every family and district serve God in perfect unanimity with the same
endurance and the same disdain of death everywhere, persecutors should
have realised that there is a logic in it which is being defended to the death
not without good cause, and that there is a solid base to it which not only
keeps the religion from breaking up despite the constant injustice it suffers,
but is for ever expanding it and strengthening it.

6 Their malice is also exposed by the fact that they think they have
utterly subverted the religion of God if they muck up God's people: yet God
can still be satisfied, and none of his worshippers is so bad that they will not,
given the chance, revert to satisfying him with even greater devotion. 7 Know¬
ledge of having sinned and fear of being punished makes them more faithful;
there is always much greater strength in afaith restored by penitence. 8 If itis
their own belief that their gods are satisfied by gifts, sacrifice and incense
when seen to be angry with them, whatever reason can they havefor imagining
that our God is so relentlessly implacable that having made libation to their
gods, under compulsion and unwillingly, one cannot continue a Christian?
Perhaps they think that people once so tainted will switch their
determination and begin to do freely what they did before under torture. 9
Would anyonefreely takeon a duty which begins in injustice? Could anyone

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

307

see the scars on his body and not hate those gods all the more that are the
cause of his bearing those everlasting marks of punishment scored in his
flesh? 10 The fact is that, on God’s terms of peace, all who fled him come
back, and a new group comes over in addition, in amazement at our virtue.

11 When ordinary people see men being torn apart with different sorts of
torture and yet maintaining their endurance unbowed while their tormentors
grow weary, they come to the conclusion, quite rightly, that the resolute
consensus of so many people dying is no empty thing, and that endurance
itself could not survive so much agony without God. 12 Robbers, and other
men of sturdy physique, cannot bear torture of that sort; they utter cries and
lamentations, and give way to the pain: no spirit of endurance has been
granted to them. Our people, however - and I will leave out our men - our
women and children triumph over their tormentors without a sound; even
fire cannot force a groan from them. 13 Romans can come and boast of their
M ucius or their Regulus (Regulus gave himself up to the enemy to be killed
because he was ashamed to live on in captivity, and M ucius, once captured
by the enemy, saw he could not escape death and so thrust his hand into the
fire, to satisfy his foe for the crime of murder he meant to commit, earning
by the penalty a pardon he had not deserved): 14 look at our weaker sex, and
look at our children in their weakness, enduring the torture of every limb and
the torture of fire, not because they must- they could avoid itif they wished
- but willingly, because they trust in God! 59

15 That is the true virtue, the virtue boasted of by vainglorious
philosophers too, butin empty words, notfact, when they argue that nothing
is so proper to the seriousness and self-consistency of a wise man than his
capacity to be unmoved in his opinions and purposes by any threats, and that
it is very important to be tortured to death in order not to betray a trust, not
to decline a duty, not to do any unjust deed for fear of death or pain: 16 unless
perhaps they see Horace as plainly mad when he says in his lyrics [Carm.
3.3.1-4] 'The just man who holds to his purpose is not swayed by com¬
mands from his fellows given in a wrongful passion, nor by a looming
tyrant’s countenance: his mind stays firm.’ 17 No truer word can be said than

59 This passage, stressing the martyr's virtue of patientia and embodying a comparison
with Roman heroes, draws on M in. Fel. 37.1-5. C. M ucius Scaevola set out to assassinate the
Etruscan king Porsena, but mistook his target; taken before the king he won his freedom after
boldly thrusting his sword-hand into the flames of a brazier (see Livy 2.12.1; V. M ax. 3.3); M.
Atilius Regulus, captured by the Carthaginians and sent to Rome on parole with their terms,
recommended the Romans to refuse and returned to be tortured to death rather than break his
word (see Cic. Off. 3.99; Hor. Carm. 3.5.13-56; Livy 18 epit.).

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that, if it is applied to those who, to avoid swerving from faith and justice,
resist no tortures or death, and are not deterred by demands of tyrants or
governors’ swords from defending with utter constancy that real, substantial
freedom which every wiseman must guard upon this earth. 18 W ho has such
a lofty presumption as to tell me not to lift my eyes to heaven or to force
upon me the worship of what I won't worship, or the non-worship of what I
will? 19 W hat would our prospects be if this too, something which ought to
be done freely, isto be forced out of us at someone el se's whim? But as long
as we have the virtue to despise death and pain, nobody will achieve that,
and if we maintain our purpose, why are we thought foolish for doing what
philosophers acclaim? 20 Seneca was right when he attacked inconsistency.
' People thi nk,' he says, 'that the height of virtue is great courage, and anyone
who despises death they also treat as lunatic: which is a piece, quite simply,
of utter perversity.’ 60 21 All these devotees of empty cults make their
objection with the same stupidity with which they fail to recognise the true
God. The Erythrean Sibyl callsthem G deaf and mindless, 61 since they neither
hear God's message nor perceive it, but fear and worship clay which their
own fingers have moulded.

Carneades undermined an empty justice; true justice is piety and
fairness

M.lWhy the wise are thought foolish has a sound explanation (the mis¬
understanding is not without cause), and we must give it with care, so that
these peopl e can, i f possi bl e, at I ast acknow I edge thei r mi stake. 2 J usti ce has
of its own nature a certain sort of foolishness, and I can confirm this from
both divine and human evidence. Butweshall probably get nowhere with them
uni ess we use their own authorities to show them that no one can be just (being
just is closely linked with true wisdom) unless he also appears to be foolish.

3 There was a philosopher of the Academic school called Carneades 62
(his force, eloquence and shrewdness in debate may be understood by
anyone unaware of it from the writings of Cicero or Lucilius; it is in Lucilius
that Neptune, debating a very tricky question, declares that it could not be
sorted out, 'not unless Orcus sent back Carneades himself' 63 ): this Carneades

60 Sen. F78,194 (Vottero).

61 Orac. Sib. 8.397. L. quotes the Greek and then translates into Latin.

62 See on 3.30.6 above. For the incident see M acr. Sat. 1.5.

63 Lucil. fr.35 (Warmington) =17 (Charpin) =31 (M arx).

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309

had been sent to Rome by the Athenians as their spokesman, and he dis¬
cussed the topic of justice at length before an audience including Galba and
Cato the Censor, 64 the best speakers of the day. 4 The next day, however, he
overturned his argument with a contrary set of points, destroying the justice
he had so commended the previous day: the seriousness of a philosopher
was gone, whose views should be firm and steady, replaced by that
rhetorical sort of exercise which was his usual practice, of speaking on either
side, so that he could refute any view put by others. 65 5 In Cicero the argu¬
ment which overthrows justice is put by L. Furius; I imagine Cicero did it
like that (he was writing on government after all) in order to set up the
defence and celebration of what he thought indispensable to government.
Carneades’ intention, however, was to rebut A ristotle and Plato, the cham¬
pions of justice; so he gathered all that was being said in its favour in his first
speech so that he could overthrow it as he did later. 6 it was very easy to
undermine a justice that had no roots; at the time there was no justice on
earth, so that its nature and quality could not be identified by philosophers.
7 If only all those great men had had as much knowledge as they had
eloquence and spirit, to supply a full defence of the supreme virtue, whose
roots are in religion and whose essence is in fairness! But as they didn't
know part one of the thing, so they couldn't even grasp part two.

8 I want to set out first, concisely and briefly, what justice is, so that
people can see that the philosophers have had no awareness of it and in their
ignorance could not have defended it. 9 Justice embraces all the virtues
together, but there are two chief virtues which cannot be split off and separ¬
ated from it, piety and fairness. Loyalty, self-control, uprightness, innocence,
integrity and all other qualities of that sort can exist, whether naturally or
thanks to one's upbringing, in people who do not know justice, just as such

64 Ser. Sulpicius Galba (cos. 144 BC), a younger contemporary of Cato, is best known for
greed and cruelty at the expense of the Lusitanians; see App. B.C. 59-60. Cicero (Brut. 295)
acknowledges his importance but airs doubts about his oratory. M . Porcius Cato (cos. 195,
censor 184) was a highly influential figure in Roman politics in the first half of the 2nd century
BC. He pressed consistently and determinedly for high moral standards in public life; in the last
year of his life (149) he attempted unsuccessfully to have Galba condemned. A bitter opponent
of Carthage, he was the prime mover in its eventual destruction (146). The whole of his de
Agricultura, extensive fragments of his speeches, his historical work Origines and other
writings survive.

65 L. overlooks the nature of Carneades' mission, which gave a serious point to his strategy.
Athens had seized Oropus, a small town on its borders, and had been heavily penalised for it.
Carneades evidently raised the question whether the Athenians should be judged by a different
standard from the Romans in creating and expanding their empire. SeeAtkins (2000), 494.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

qualities always have done; 10 the Romans of old, who habitually boasted of
their justice, certainly boasted of those virtues, which can, as I said, come
from justice and can also be distinguished from their source. 66

11 The twin arteries of justice are piety and fairness, and all justice
springs from these two. Its basic beginning is in that first source, piety, while
all its intellectual energy is in the second source.

Piety is simply the knowing of God, as it is soundly defined by Tris-
megistus, asweobserved elsewhere. 12 If, then, piety isto know God, 67 and
the nub of getting to know God is to worship him, anyone without a cult of
God simply does not know justice. How can he know it for itself when he
does not know its source? 13 Plato said a great deal about a one and only god
as the maker of theworld, but he said nothing of hisworship; he had dreamt
his god: he did not know him. If he or anyone else had wanted to make a full
defence of justice, he should first have cast out cults of gods, because they
are contrary to piety. 14 That was what Socrates tried to do, and he got put in
prison, so that it was clear even then what would happen to people who
started to defend true justice and to serve the one God.

15 The second part of justice is fairness; 68 1 mean not simply the fairness
involved in good judgments, which is itself a laudable thing in a just man,
but the fairness of levelling oneself with everyone else, what Cicero calls
'equality of status’. 16 God who created human beings and gave them the
breath of life wanted all to be on a level, that is, to be equal, and he estab¬
lished the same conditions of life for everyone, creating all to be wise and
pledging them all immortality; no one is cut off from God’s celestial bene¬
volence. 17 J ust as he divides his unique light equally between all, makes
springs flow, supplies food and grants the sweet refreshment of sleep to all,
so too he bestows fairness and virtue on all. No one is a slave with him, and
no oneisa master, for if 'he is the same father to everyone' [Lucr. 2.992], so
are we all his children with equal rights. 18 No one is poor in God’s eyes
exceptforlack of justice, and no oneisrich withoutafull tally of the virtues;
moreover, no one is illustrious except for goodness and innocence; 69 no one
is most notable except for lavish works of charity; no one is most perfect

66 A concession to old Rome, except that boasting is not practising.

67 Cf. Cic.N.D. 2.153; IMF Corp. Herm. 9.4.

68 The discussion of aequitas includes a striking criticism of social inequality, as practised
by, among others, Greeks and Romans. See pp. 39-40.

69 Innocentia, rendered as innocence, means not doing harm; though in form the word is
negative, L. gives it a strongly positive sense, i nnocence is an unsatisfactory translation: readers
are urged to remember its root meaning on all occasions.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

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exceptfor having completed every degree of virtue. 70 19 That is why neither
Romans nor Greeks could command justice, because they kept people
distinct in different grades from poor to rich, from weak to strong, from lay
power up to the sublime power of kings. 20 Where people are not all equal,
there is no fairness: the inequality excludes justice of itself. The whole force
of justice lies in the fact that everyone who comes into this human estate on
equal terms is made equal by it.

Virtue, not rank, counts with God

35.1 If these two sources of justice suffer any alteration, all goodness and
truth are gone and justice itself goes back to heaven. Philosophers failed to
find the true good because they did not know where justice sprang from or
what it did. it has been revealed to our people alone.

2 Someonewill say, 'A re there not some amongst you who are poor, and
some rich, some slaves and some masters? Is there no distinction between
individuals?' No, none; the only reason why we share the name of brother
among us is our belief that we are equal. 3 Since we measure all things
human spiritually and not physically, even though our physical conditions
differ, yet we have no slaves: we both name them and treat them as brothers
in spirit and fellow slaves in worship. 4 Riches also cause no distinctions
except for their power to make people notable for good works; people are
not rich by possession of wealth but by using it for acts of justice, and those
who seem poor are yet rich because they need nothing and want nothing.
5 Though we are therefore all equal in humility of spirit, free and slave, rich
and poor, yet in God's eyes we are distinguishable for virtue: the more just
we are, the higher we stand with him.

6 If it is justice to level oneself with people even lower - that was his
great achievement, bringing himself equal to those below him - neverthe¬
less, one who bears himself not just on a level with them but even lower will
achieve in the judgment of God a much higher degree of worth. 7 Since
everything in this secular world is short-lived and bound to decay, so people
push themselves before others and fight for position, which is horrible,
arrogant and far removed from wisdom: all those earthly achievements are
quite the opposite of things in heaven. 8 J ust as the wisdom of men in God’s

70 For'illustrious', 'most notable’ and 'most perfect’ L. uses the words egregius, clarissimus
and perfectissimus, which were the standard terms for designating the status of, respectively, an
equestrian, a senator and an equestrian functionary of a particular rank.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

eyes is the height of folly, and folly, as I have explained, is the height of
wisdom, so anyone walking tall and conspicuouson earth isa low and abject
thing before God. 9 To say nothing of the good things here on earth, which
earn a great regard but are opposed to real goodness and merely sap our
spiritual energies, nobility, wealth and power are of little effect when God
can bring even kings themselves lower than the lowest. God in counselling
us therefore set this sentence in particular among his divine precepts: 'He
who exalts himself shall be brought low, and he who abases himself shall be
exalted' [M t. 23:12], 10 T he healthy messageof that is that anyone who makes
himself level with others and behaves with humility will have precedence
and note with God. 11 That verse in Euripides is very sound which says
'W hat here are thought ills are in heaven goods.’ 71

Carneades overthrew both civil and natural justice

l&ll have explained why philosophers could neither fi nd justice nor defend
it; now I return to my original aim. 2 Because of the weakness of what the
philosophers were offering, Carneades was bold enough to refute it because
he realised it could be refuted. 3 In summary he argued as follows [Rep.
3.21]: people have sanctioned laws for themselves because laws are useful;
these laws vary, of course, to suit different lifestyles, and they are often
changed within any onegroupto suitachanged situation; thereisno natural
law. All human beings and all other living things go for what is useful for
them as their nature guides them; accordingly, either there is no justice, or, if
there is any, it is the height of folly, since anyone working for the benefit of
others would do hurt to himself. 4 To prove his case he added that if all the
people who did well out of empire, including the Romans themselves who
controlled the whole world, were anxious to be just, that is, to give back
other people's property, they would have to go back to wattle and daub and
lie in want and squalor. 5 Then, leaving communal issues to one side, he
proceeded to individual ones [3.27]: 'If agood man,’ he said, 'had a runaway
slave or an unsound, unhealthy house, and he alone knew of these faults and
so published a bill of sale, will he admit that he is selling a runaway slave or
an unhealthy house, or will he conceal it from the buyer? 6 If he admits it, he
will be adjudged a good man for failing to deceive, but he will also be
considered a fool, since he will either sell at a poor price or fail to sell at all;

71 Eur. fr. 1100 (Nauck); but its attribution to Euripides is doubtful. L. gives the verse in a
Latin trimeter.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

313

if he conceals the information, he will be wise for consulting his own
interest, but he will also be a bad man for the deception. 7 Again, if he were
to find someone who thought he had copper pyrites for sale when it was
actually gold, or lead when it was silver, will he hold his tongue to buy it
cheap, or speak, and pay full cost? It plainly looks stupid to prefer the expen¬
sive option.’ 72 8 Carneades' intention was to show thereby that one who is
just and good is a fool, and one who is wise is bad. And yet it is possible,
without disaster, for people to be content with poverty.

9 He then proceeded to more serious instances, where no one could be
justwithout risking hislife.' 11 is of course justice,' hesaid [3.29-31], 'not to
kill someone, and certainly not to hurt a stranger. 10 So what will a just man
do if he happens to be shipwrecked and someone weaker has seized a plank?
Won't he push him off the plank so that he can climb on himself and survive
by staying on it, especially when there is no witness, in mid-ocean? If he is
wise, he will; if he doesn’t, hemust perish himself. If, however, he prefers to
die rather than lay hand upon the other, he is now a just man but also a fool,
because he fails to spare his own life and spares another’s instead. 11 So too,
if his own side is routed and the enemy start a pursuit, and our just man finds
some wounded man sitting on a horse, will he spare him, to be killed
himself, or will he push him off so that he himself can escape the foe? If he
pushes him off, he is wise but also bad; if he doesn’t, he is just but also,
necessarily, a fool.' 12 He thus divided justice into two categories, calling
one civi I and the other natural, and he overthrew both, because the civi I one
is wisdom but not justice, whereas the natural one is justice but not wisdom.

13 That is subtle stuff, obviously, with a lurking threat, and beyond
Cicero’s powers of refutation: when he has Laelius 73 speak in response to
Furiuson behalf of justice, he leaves it all unchallenged, passing it by as if it
were a trap, so that it looks as if Laelius defended not the natural sort of
justice, which had been accused of stupidity, but the civil sort, which Furius
had admitted was wisdom but not just.

Carneades refuted: folly and wisdom redefined

17.1As was relevant to the present discussion, I haveshown how j ustice has
the semblance of folly, so that it is clear there is reason for the confusion of
people who think that those of our religion are fools in appearing to do the
sort of thing that Carneades proposed.

72 For the examples see Cic. Off. 3.54 and 89.

73 C. Laelius nicknamed Sapiens, friend of Scipio Aemilianus, consul in 140.

314

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

2 I now feel that something greater is demanded of me, to show why God
wished to wrap justice up to look I ike folly and to withdraw it from the sight
of mankind. First, however, I must answer Furius’ case, since Laelius’ res¬
ponse was so inadequate. Laelius may very well have been wise, as people
called him, but he was no sort of advocate for true justice at all, not grasping
the basic source of it. 3 The relevant defence is much easier for us to make,
since by the kindness of heaven justice is something familiar to us and very
well known: we know it for real, and not merely as a name. 4 Plato and
Aristotle were full of good intentions in their desire to defend justice, and
they might have achieved something if their good endeavours, eloquence
and quality of mind had been aided by knowledge of things divine. 5 With¬
out it their efforts were vain and fell flat: they could not persuade anyone to
live by their prescription because their doctrine had no foundation from
above. 6 Our efforts are bound to be more reliable because our instructor is
God. They drew a picture in words of an imagined justice, one not there to
see, and they could not confirm what they presented with live examples.
7 Their listeners could always answer that life could not be lived in the way
they recommended in their discussions; indeed, itwasso impossible that no
one had yet existed who followed that sort of life. 8 We can show the truth of
what we say, however, not just in words but in examples drawn from reality.
9 Carneadesdid sense what the nature of justice is, except that he did not see
deeply enough that it is not folly 74 - but I think I understand his mental
process. Fie did not really think the just man was a fool, but though he knew
he wasn't, and yet did not understand even so why he appeared to be, he
wanted to prove that truth lurked in obscurity so that he could preserve that
tenet of his doctrine summarily expressed as'Nothing can be known.'

10 Let us see then whether justice can have any bond with folly. 'If a just
man,’ he says, 'fails to take a horse from a wounded man or a plank from a
shipwrecked man in order to save his own life, he is a fool.' 11 First: I
entirely deny the possibility of an event of that sort happening to a just man
qua just, because the just man is the enemy of no man born and has
absolutely no desire for what belongs to someone else. 12 Why would he go
to sea, 75 or what would he want from other people's lands when his own
sufficed? Why go to war and tangle himself in other people's lunacies when
his heart was full of peacewith everyone eternally? 13A delightin overseas

74 Some text may be missing.

75 Cf. 6.4.20. L. may be aware of Tert. idol. 11; cf. ibid. 19, where military service is
attacked, on which see 6.20.15-16. The evils of trade for enrichment, however, were a
rhetorical topos and also feature in poetic discussions of the Golden Age.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

315

trade or human blood will hardly mark out the man who doesn’t know how
to look for profit, is perfectly well fed, and thinks murder a sin not only for
him to do but also to assist in and to watch. But I leave all that to one side,
since it is possible a just man might be compelled, even against his will, to
undergo the experience.

14 Do you think then, my dear Furius - or rather, my dear Carneades,
since it's your speech entirely - that justice is so empty a thing, so unneces¬
sary and so contemptible in God's eyes, that it is powerless and has nothing
in it capable of working to its own protection? 15 Of course: knowledge of
the force of justice is impossible for people who relate everything to this
temporary life because they don'tknow the mystery of man. 16 Despite their
understanding that virtue is full of distress and sorrow, when they discuss it
they do say that it is something to seek out, but for its own sake, since they
wholly fail to see its rewards, which are eternal and immortal. Thus it is that
in relating everything to this present life they reduce virtue to folly, since its
support of all the labours of this life is vain and empty.

17 I will deal with that at greater length elsewhere; in the meantime,
justiceisthe topic, as attheoutset, and itspowerisso great that when itlifts
its gaze to heaven, it earns all that God can give it. 18 Horace was right to say
[Carm. 1.22.1-8] that the power of innocenceisso great that it needs neither
weapons nor muscle for its own protection: wherever he goes, 'the man of
honest life, clean of crime, needs no Moorish darts, nor bow, my dear
Fuscus, and quiverful of poisoned arrows, whether he journey across the
stormy Syrtes or through the hostile Caucasus or where the renowned
Hydaspes licks the land'. 19 It is therefore impossible for any just man to
lack divine protection amid the perils of storm and war: even if he sails with
parricides and criminals, either they too will be spared in order that the one
just and innocent soul is saved, or at least that soul will be saved alone
though all the rest perish.

20 Let us admit, however, the possibility of Carneades’ hypothesis: so
what will the just man do if he comes across a wounded man on a horse or a
shipwrecked man on a plank? I say without a qualm, he will rather die than
kill. 21 That is no reason why justice, man’s sole good, should be called
folly. What better, more precious thing could mankind have than innocence?
Obviously itisall the more perfect a thing if youtakeitto its extreme, if you
would ratherdiethan seetheprinciplediminished. 22 'Itisfolly,' he says, 'to
spare the life of another to the detriment of one’s own.' So you'll think it
foolish to die even for friendship's sake, will you? If so, why praise those
members of the Pythagorean sect, one of whom surrendered himself to the

316

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

tyrant as earnest for the other, and that other then turned up himself at the
appointed hour when his guarantor was being led off, and freed him by his
intervention? Their virtue, in being willing the one to die for his friend and
the other to die for his pledge, would not be held in so much honour if people
thought them foolish. 23 And then, precisely because of that virtue of theirs,
they had a tyrant’s congratulations on saving each other, and a very cruel
man had his own nature reformed. Why, he is even said to have begged them
to make him a third in their friendship, clearly not seeing them as fools, but
as men of goodness and wisdom. 24 Since it is counted a supreme glory to
die for friendship and faith, I do not see why it is not also to a man’s glory to
die for the sake of innocence. People who call it a crime in us to be willing
to die for God are very foolish when they themselves praise to the skies
anyone willing to diefor a fellow human being.

25 To conclude my argument: reason itself points out that one and the
same person cannot be both just and foolish, or both wise and unjust. Fools
cannot know what is good and just and that is why they always go wrong.
Fools are led by theirvices likecaptives: they cannot resist because they lack
a virtue they know nothing of. 26 The just keep away from all sin, however,
because they cannot act as if they had no knowledge of right and wrong. And
who can tell right from wrong except the wise? The conclusion is that a fool
can never be j ust, and the unj ust can never be w i se.

27 If that is absolutely sound, then it is plain that anyone failing to take
a horse from a wounded man ora plank from a shipwrecked man is not a fool
because to do that is a sin, and a wiseman keeps from sin. 28 Fie looks a fool,
however, I do admit, because of people’s ignorance: they don't know what is
appropriate in each case. The whole question is best resolved not by
instances but by definition.

29 Folly, then, isastraying in deed orword caused by ignoranceof right
and wrong. It is not folly to fail to spare oneself in order to avoid harming
one’s neighbour (which is bad). That is what reason and truth prescribe us.
30 In all animals we see a nature which is, because of their lack of wisdom,
self-preserving: they hurt others to help themselves; they do not know that it
is bad to cause hurt. 76 31 But because man has knowledgeof good and evil,

76 Worth note here is the uniquequia -t-indic. (nesci unt quia malum estnocere) usedinstead
of acc. + inf in. (N B the instance at 7.4.17 is in a quotation from A sclepiades.) Petronius gives us
the earliest instances of this construction, as might be expected (45.10, 46.4); for as good a
Ciceronian as Lactantius to admit such a latterday structure is astonishing. He is regularly
unclassical, however, in his pairing in conditional sentences of pres. subj. in the protasis with
fut. indie, in the apodosis.

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

317

he refrainsfrom causing hurt, even to hisown disadvantage, which an animal,
being irrational, cannot do; that is why innocence is counted among the
supreme human virtues. 77 So it becomes plain that the wisest man is the one
who prefers to die to avoid causing hurt: he thus maintains a sense of duty
which distinguishes us from thedumb beasts. 32 As Carneades wished us to
see, the man who refuses to point out the seller’s mistake in order to buy gold
cheap, or to say that he's selling a runaway slave or an unhealthy house with
an eye to hisown profit, is not wise, but shrewd and clever. 78 3 3 Shrewdness
and cleverness exist in dumb beasts too, when they lie in wait, for instance,
or use a trick to catch and eat, or when they deceive the traps of others in
various ways; wisdom, however, falls to man alone. 34 Wisdom is intelli¬
gence applied either to doing good and right or to refraining from unsound
words and deeds. No wiseman ever aims at gain, because he has a contempt
for the goods of this world; nor does he let anyone be deceived, because it is
the duty of a good man to put people right when they are wrong and to bring
them back in line; it is human nature to be sociable and generous. That is the
unique basis for man’s kinship with God.

The key: there is life after death, rewards and punishments

3&lThe apparent folly of a man who prefers to be in need or to die rather
than cause hurt or seize another man’s property is caused no doubt by the
fact that peopl e thi nk death destroys a man. T hat bel i ef i s the source of al I the
confusion, on the part of philosophers as much as of ordinary people. 2 If we
are nothing after death, then certainly it is the mark of a very great fool not
to consider how this life may last as long as possible and be full of every
advantage. 3 A nyoneso doing is bound to depart from the rule of justice. But
if a longer and better life awaits us, which is what we learn from the
arguments of great philosophers, from the response of the poets and from the
divine utterance of prophets, then it is the mark of the wise to despise this
temporal life with its goods; every loss of this life is repaid with immortality.

4 In Cicero [Rep. 3.40], the defender of justice - Laelius, as ever -
observes: 'Virtue in effect wants honour; it has no other reward.’ But it has,
my dear Laelius, and it is a reward entirely worthy of it, one which you could
never suspect, for you had no knowledge of divine literature. 'It receives its
reward without fuss,' he says, 'and requests it without bitterness.’ You are

77 High praise; cf. L. on patientia, with which innocentia isclosely linked: 22.2-3 below.

78 Cf. Cic. Off. 1.63, drawing on Plato (Men. 246e).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

very wrong if you think that a human reward for virtue is possible, si nee you
yourself have said elsewhere, quite rightly, 'What riches or powers or king¬
doms can you offer this fellow who counts all such stuff human and reckons
his goods are heaven-sent?’ 5 No one would think you wise, my dear Laelius,
when you contradict yourself, and a little later you deprive virtue of what
you gave it. It is ignorance of the truth, of course, which makes your
judgment so vague and wobbly.

6 Now for your next sentence. 'But if virtue is denied its rewards by
general ingratitude or widespread envy or hostile power...’ 7 0 how fragile,
how empty a virtue it is that you present, if it can be denied its own reward!
If it 'reckons its goods are heaven-sent’ (I quote), how can there be people
with such ingratitude, such envy, such power that they can deprive virtue of
the goods which have been divinely appointed for it?

8 'M any,' he says, 'many are the consolations that give it joy, and it is
sustained by its own beauty most of all.’ What consolations? W hat beauty?
Beauty often enough stands accused, and then convicted.

9 What if it were, as Furius said, 'to be seized, harassed, cast out, in
poverty, its hands cut off, its eyes put out, condemned, imprisoned, branded,
killed in miserable fashion'? Will virtue lose its reward, or even perish? No:
it will receive its reward at God’s judgment and it will live and thrive for
ever. 10 Take that away, and there is nothing in human life capable of
seeming so useless and futile as virtue; but its own natural goodness and
honesty can teach us that the soul is not mortal and has a divine reward
appointed for it by God. 11 But God had three aims in wanting virtue to be
hidden under theguiseof folly: that the mystery of histruth and hisreligion
should be secret, that the cults and the cleverness of this earth that exalts
itself so much and is so very pleased with itself should be condemned for
emptiness and error, and finally that things should be difficult, the path that
leads to the sublime reward of immortality being very narrow.

12 I have explained, I think, why our people are thought fools by fools.
To prefer to be tortured and killed, rather than pick three fingers of incense
and cast it on afire, does seem asfoolish as caring more at a moment of peril
for someone else's soul than one’s own. 13 They don’t know how wicked a
thing it is to worship anything besides God 'who founded earth and heaven',
who created the human race, and gave it breath and light. 14 But if the
wickedest of servants is the one who runs away from his master and is
judged to deserve beating, imprisonment, the chain gang, crucifixion and
every sort of misery, and if in thesameway a son isconsidered depraved and
impious who deserts his own father in order not to obey him, and for that

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

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reason is thought fit to be disinherited and to have his name deleted from the
family for ever, how much more so the man who deserts God, in whom two
titles of equal worth and honour combine, master and father? 15 The man
who buys a slave at market does him no more good than to feed him, and he
does it for the sake of the slave's use to him; the man who si res a son has no
control over the conception, birth and life of that son, and thereby is plainly
not the father, but merely the instrument of generation. 16 So if a man
deserts the one who is both true master and true father, what are his due
penalties if not those that God himself has established in preparing eternal
fire for unjust spirits, in line with the threat to the impious and rebellious
which he delivers through his prophets?

Persuasion preferable to force and freedom to coercion; pagan and
Christian religions compared

m 79 Let them learn, then, those murderers of their own and others' souls,
how unforgiveable a crime they commit, first in throttling themselves in
serving such awful demons which God has condemned to eternal punish¬
ment, and secondly in not even allowing God to be worshipped by others,
striving instead to direct peopleto cults of death and making such strenuous
efforts to prevent any soul abiding on earth intact to gaze at heaven in utter
safety. 2 W hat else can I call them but wretched, obedient as they are to the
behests of their own plunderers whom they think gods? They do not know
the state of those gods, or their origin, or their names; they cannot account
for them; they roam at random, in the grip of vulgar belief and indulging
their stupidity. 3 If you asked them to account for their belief, they couldn't
do it. They would seek refuge instead in the opinions of their ancestors: they
were the wise ones, they put it to the test, they knew what was best. Thus
they fail to use their own wits, and for as long as they believe in others'
mistakes, they abdicate reason. 4 W rapped in a total ignorance, they know
neither themselves nor their gods. If only they would keep their mi stakes and
stupidity to themselves! Yet they even grab at others to be partners in their
wickedness, as if they meant to find solace in bringing many down with
them. 5 It is exactly this ignorance which makes them so evil in persecuting
the wise, when they pretend that they are acting in their interests and want to
recall them to a right understanding.

79 In this chapter and the next L. makes a spirited and eloquent case for the freedom of
religion, and for the use of persuasion rather than force in religious disputes.

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6 Do they try to do this by talk, or by offering any kind of argument? Not
at all: they use violence and torture. What an extraordinary blind madness!
Evil intent is presumed to exist in the people who try to keep their faith, and
a good intent in their butchers! 7 Is there evil intent in people who suffer
tortures contrary to all the rights of man and every ordinance of God, or is it
in those who do to the bodies of the innocent things not done even by the
cruellest of robbers, the angriest of enemies or the most ferocious of barbar¬
ians? Do they lie to themselves so much that they cross the words good and
bad over and switch their meanings? 8 Why don't they call day night and sun
darkness? Anyway, it is equally outrageous to label good bad, wise foolish,
and just impious; if they haveany confidence in philosophy or rhetoric, why
don't they equip themselves to rebut these words of ours if they can, meeting
us face to face and arguing every detail? 9 They really ought to take up the
defence of their gods; otherwise, if our arguments prevail, as daily they do,
their gods will be abandoned along with their shrines and other rubbish.
Since they get nowhere by violence - worship of God increases the more
they try to suppress it - let them operate instead by talk and exhortation.

10 Let them come out into the open, pontiffs great and lesser, flamens,
augurs, ki ngs of sacrifice, and all who are priests and spokesmen of the cults,
and let them invite us to a meeting and encourage us to adopt cults of gods;
let them convince us that these gods by whose power and foresight al I thi ngs
are controlled are many in number; let them reveal how gods and their rites
were presented to mankind in the beginning, let them explain the source and
the system, let them set forth what profit there is in worshipping so and what
penalty for contempt of it all: why their gods wish to be worshipped by human
beings, and, if they are blessed already, what they will gain from such human
piety; and let them confirm all this, not by mere assertion - the authority of
a mere mortal is worthless- butwith proofsfrom heaven, aswedo. llThere
is no need for violence and brutality: worship cannot be forced; it is some¬
thing to be achieved by talk rather than blows, so that there is free will in it.
They must unsheathe the sharpness of their wits: if the reasoning is sound,
let them argue it! We are ready to listen if they would tell; if they keep silent,
we simply cannot believe them, just as we do not yield when they use
violence. 12 Let them copy us, and so bring out the reason in it all; we use no
guile ourselves, though they complain we do; instead, we teach, we show,
we demonstrate. 13 No one is detained by us against his will - anyone
without devotion and faith is no use to God; but when truth detains, no one
departs.

14 If they have any confidence in their truth, let them teach it to us: let

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them talk, let them just utter, let them have the nerve, I say, to engage in
debate of some such sort with us; at once, I'm sure, from our old women,
whom they despise, and from our children too, there will be gales of laughter
for so stupid an error. 15 They have great expertise; they know their gods’
genealogies, achievements and powers, their deaths and burials by the book; 80
they know that the rituals in which they were initiated arose out of the
achievements or mishaps, oreven deaths, of men: so it’s a piece of incredible
lunacy to think that those who they dare not deny were mortal are gods - or
if they were so impudent as to deny it, what they and their friends have
written would prove them wrong, and the way their rituals began would be
the overwhelming proof. 16 Let them understand from that how great the
distinction is between true and false, since for ail their eloquence they
themselves fail to convince, whiletiros of no education succeed because the
truth of our facts speaks for itself.

17 So why do they behave with such savagery? To increase their folly
while wanting to lessen it? The butcher's trade and piety are two very
different things; truth cannot be partnered with violence, nor justice with
cruelty. 18 They are quite right not to risk any explanation of things divine,
in case they are mocked by our people and abandoned by their own. 19 If
ordinary people, whose judgment is simple and straightforward, came to
know that those mysteries of theirs were established in memory of the dead,
they will vote against, i guess, and look for something else more sound to
worship. Hence the institution by shrewd operators of 'the hush of the faith¬
ful at sacrifice,’ 81 in case people should know what they are worshipping.

20 Since we are well versed in their doctrines, why do they not either
believe us because we know both systems, or envy us because we have put
truth before falsehood? Oh, but cults in the public domain, they say, must be
defended. 21 Poor things! It’s such a decent ambition, and so wretchedly
wrong! They realise that nothing matters morein human affairs than religion
and that it ought to be defended with every endeavour, but they are just as
deceived in the religion itself as they are in how to defend it. 22 Religion
must be defended not by killing but by dying, not by violence but by
endurance, not by sin but by faith: that is the contrast between bad and good,
and in religion the practice must be good, not bad. 23 If you want to defend
religion by bloodshed, torture and evil, then at once it will not be so defended:
it will be polluted and outraged. There is nothing that is so much a matter of

80 Here Euhemerism, the idea that gods were promoted men, is slyly introduced.

81 Verg. A. 3.112.

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willingness as religion, and if someone making sacrifice is spiritually turned
off, then it's gone, it's nothing.

24 The argument is therefore right that you defend religion with endur¬
ance or death; conservation of faith by that means is acceptable to God and
adds authority to the religion. 25 If a man who serves in an army here on
earth keeps his pledge to his king while doing some notable deed which he
survives, he is prized and favoured greatly, and if he dies, for having
undergone death for his leader he gai ns the greatest glory: all the more need,
therefore, to keep faith with God who is commander of us all; for God can
reward virtue not only intheliving but also inthedead. 26 Since worship of
God is an act of heavenly service, it needs the maximum of devotion and
loyalty. How will God lovea worshipper if the worshipper doesn't love him,
and how will he grant the request of a suppliant who comes to make his
prayer without heartfelt commitment?

27 When these people come to make sacrifice, they offer their gods
nothing intimate or special, no cleanness of mind, no reverence, no awe. 82
When the sacrifice is over in all its emptiness, they leave their religion as
they found it, in the temple and with the temple; they bring none of it with
them and they take none of it away. 28 Hence the fact that religions of that
sort cannot make people good and cannot be reliable and stable, and people
can easily detach themselves from them, as there is nothing thereto be learnt
that is relevant to life, wisdom and faith. 29 What gives these gods their
hold? What is their power, their teaching, their origin, reason, basis or
substance? What’s the aim of itand what’s the promise, fora man to be able
to observe it faithfully and defend it bravely? All I see in it is a ritual of mere
fingertip relevance. 30 Our religion, however, is solid, strong and change¬
less, because it teaches justice, it is always with us, it is entirely in the mind
of the worshipper, and it treats the mind itself as the sacrificial offering.
There, all they ask is blood of cattle, smoke, and silly libations; with us it is
a good mind, a pure heart, and a life of innocence. There, there is an indis¬
criminate congregation of shameless adulteresses, pert brothel madams, foul
whores, gladiators, brigands, thieves and poisoners, and all they pray for is
to commit their crimes unpunished. 31 W hat would a robber or a gladiator
ask for in making sacrifice, except to kill? Ora poisoner, except to deceive?
Or a whore, except to sin full-time? Or an adulteress, except either her
husband’s death or the concealment of her own unchastity? Or a pimp,

82 In these paragraphs L. offers a neat (and rhetorical) comparison of pagan and Christian
religion.

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323

except plenty of clients to pluck? Ora thief, except bigger takings? 32 With
us there is no place at all even for minor, common sins; anyone coming to
worship with an unsound conscience hears God's threat against him, for
God sees the secret places of the heart, God is always implacable on sin, God
requires justice and demands faith. What room is there here for a dissident
will or reluctant prayer? 33 But those poor wretches don't see even from
their own wickedness how bad what they worship is, because they come to
prayer contaminated by all their misdeeds, and they think they have made
God a pious sacrifice if they wash their hands - as if the lusts pent up in the
heart could be scoured out by even a river or purified by an ocean. 34 It is so
much better to cleanse instead the mind, which gets soiled by evil desires,
and to drive out all the vices together in the one bath of virtue and faith! He
who does that, however foul and dirty his body, is pure enough.

The persecutors have no confidence in their gods and the persecuted
have faith in God's power

2Q1 Because these people do not know what or how to worship, in their
blindness and thoughtlessness they go to the other extreme. They worship
their enemies, they placate their robbers and murderers with victims, and
they lay their own souls on loathsome altars to be burnt up with the very
incense. 2 They even get cross, poor things, that others are not perishing as
well. The dimness of their thinking is incredible. What are they to see, when
they can’t see the sun? As if their gods, if they did exist, would need any
human help against their mockers! So why do they get cross with us, if their
gods are powerless? in fact, by not believing in their gods’ powers they
destroy their gods themselves, which is being more irreligious than a total
atheist. 3 in his work de Legibus Cicero says [2.19], in recommending that
people go to sacrifice 'in purity, they shall present piety and lay wealth
aside; him who doeth otherwise god himself will arraign'. 4 Quite right: itis
not proper to despair of God: you are to worship him because you think him
powerful. How can he right a worshipper’s wrong if he cannot right his own?
5 We may then ask these people whom they think they most serve in forcing
the unwilling to sacrifice. The peoplethey compel? A kindness unwanted is
no kindness. 6 Oh, but when people don't know what is good, they must be
counselled against their will. But if they want them to be safe, why harass
and torment them into helplessness? Alternatively, where does such an
impious piece of piety come from that has them either ruin or disable, in
miserable fashion, people they would like to counsel? 7 Or is it their gods

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

they serve? A n unwilling sacrifice is no sacrifice. U nless it come from the
heart spontaneously, it is blasphemy when people act under threat of pro¬
scription, injustice, prison ortorture. 8 If those are gods that get worshipped
I ike that, they are not fit to be worshipped for the single reason that they want
to be worshipped like that; gods who get libations of tears of lamentation
and blood flowing from every limb are very proper objects of mankind’s
detestation.

9 We by contrast make no demand that our God, who is everyone’s God
willy nilly, beworshipped by anyone unwillingly, and wedo notgetcrossif
he is not worshipped. We are confident of his supreme power; he can avenge
contempt of himself just as he can avenge the unjust sufferings of his
servants. 10 That is why when we suffer outrage, we do not fight back even
verbally, but submit the redress to God, which is not what they do: in their
desire to appear as defenders of their gods, they go berserk against non¬
worshippers. 11 Out of that comes the understanding of how bad it is to
worship gods, since people should rather be brought to good by good, notby
bad; but because it is bad itself, any observance of it is bad.

12 But, it will be said, people who wreck religions must be punished.
Are we worse wreckers than the Egyptians, who worship the most offensive
figures of animals both wild and domestic, and adore as gods certain things
not fit even to mention? Are we worse than these worshippers of gods
themselves, who say they do worship their gods but then mock them in
public disgustingly, letting them be put on stage amid hoots of laughter? 13
What sort of religion is it, and what respect can it command, when it gets
worship in the temples and mockery in the theatres? And the people who
mock it don't pay the price for the outrage they do it, but depart with honour
and acclaim. 14 Are we worse wreckers than some philosophers, who say
there are no gods at all, that everything came into being of its own accord,
and that everything that happens does so at random? A re we worse than the
Epicureans, who say there are gods but deny they take any interest, neither
getting angry nor feeling gratitude? 15 That is simply an incitement not to
worship them at all, si nee they neither defend their worshippers nor threaten
their non-worshippers. Besides, when they argue against fear, all they are
trying to achieve is non-fear of gods. Yet people listen to these things with
pleasure, and discuss them with impunity.

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325

E vil spirits are at the bottom of it; why G od tolerates them and the
superficial prosperity of our enemies

2LlThe rage that is abroad against us is not because we do not worship
those gods - plenty of people don't worship them - but because the truth is
with us and, as has been very soundly said, 'Truth gives birth to hatred.' 83
2 So what shall we conclude, except that these people don't know what's
hitting them? There is a blind and irrational madness at work; we can see it
for what it is, and they cannot. 3 They do not do the persecution themselves:
they have no reason to get angry with the innocent; it is those unclean,
desperate spirits who know the truth and loathe it, insinuating themselves
into their minds and egging them on to mad acts in their ignorance. 4Aslong
as there is peace among the people of God, these spirits keep shunning the
just for fear of them, and whenever they try to occupy a body and torment its
soul, they are exorcised by the just and are put to flight in the name of the
true God, 5 and when they hear that name, they tremble and cry out, and say
they are being branded and beaten, and when asked who they are and when
they came and how they got into a man, they confess it all. Racked and
tormented so, they are forced away from the virtue of the divine name. 6 It is
those beatings and threats which cause their constant hatred of just and holy
men, and because they cannot hurt them of themselves, they whip up a
public hatred against people they see as harsh on them, and they practise
their ferocity as savagely as they can, either to weaken those people's faith
through pain or, if they cannot achieve that, to remove them altogether from
the earth, so that no one shall exist with the power to repress their evil.

71 am well aware 84 of the response that can be made from the other side:
why does that one and only God of yours, that great God, lord of all things
and master of all people as you call him, permit such things to happen and
not either avenge or protect his worshippers? Why are people who don't
worship him rich, powerful and happy, in power as magistrates and kings,
holding those very worshippers of his in subjection to their own dominion
and might? 8This too must have its explanation, so that no confusion
remains. First, this is the reason why worship of God is thought to be ineffec¬
tive: people are led astray by the way the immediate goods of this earth look,
which are quite irrelevant to care of the soul. Because they see the just are
without these things and the unjust amply provided, they conclude that

83 Repeated from 9.6.

84 A t this point L. returns to the main question: why are the just persecuted while the unjust
prosper?

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

worshipping God is futile as they can't see those goods in it, and they think
too that worship of gods is sound, since their worshippers enjoy wealth,
position and kingship. 9 But people of that persuasion are not looking deeply
enough into the point of human existence, which is totally spiritual, not
physical. 10 All they can see is the visible: the body, that is. Now the body,
in being available to sight and touch, is weak, fragile and mortal. All its
goods are things of desire and admiration - wealth, position and power, for
instance- because they bring a physical gratification, and forthat reason are
as perishable as the body itself. 11 Si nee the soul, in which alone man has his
being, is not susceptible to sight, so neither can its goods be seen, and they
have their being in virtue alone; for that reason the soul is bound to be as
stable, consistent and lasting a thing as virtue itself is, and the good of the
spirit has its being in virtue.

Persecution gives rise to virtues of patience and innocence, and swells
the numbers of the faithful

2Z1T here are goods whose enjoyment by the unj ust causes worshi p of gods
to be thought sound and effective; it is a long task to set out all the sorts of
virtue there are in order to explain in each case why the wise and just man
must keep his full distance from those goods. 2 With reference to the present
enquiry it is sufficient to prove what we mean by taking one virtue.

One important and principal virtue is certainly endurance. It wins high
and frequent praise equally in the talk of ordinary people and from philo¬
sophers and orators. 3 Its very high position among the virtues cannot be
denied; but the just and wise have to be in the power of the unjust in order to
develop it, endurance being the bearing with equanimity of ills whether im¬
posed oraccidental. 4 Because a just and wiseman isvirtuous, so endurance
is with him already: but it will be missing entirely if he suffers no adversity.
5 By contrast, a man prospering is non-patient, and so lacks this most impor¬
tant virtue: by non-patient I mean he has nothing to endure.

I nnocence too such a man cannot have, because it too is a virtue peculiar
to the just and wise; 6 instead, the man without innocence causes frequent
harm by coveting other people’s property and grabbing what he wants un¬
justly: he has no part in virtue, he is subject to vice and sin, and he aims to
lord it over the free because he has no self-control; he forgets his own
weakness and grows monstrously big-headed.

It follows that the unjust and those ignorant of God do very well for
wealth, power and position, which are all rewards of injustice but cannot

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

327

last, sought as they are through greed and violence. 7 Because the just and
wise man, as Laelius puts it, 'judges all those things to be human in origin
while his proper goods are god-sent,’ 85 so he wants nothing of anyone else's
in case of harming anyone in contravention of the rights of humanity, and he
seeks no position of power in case of doing someone an injustice - he
recognises that all were born of the same God in the same state and all are
bound by the rights of brotherhood - ; 8 instead, he is 'content with what is
his, however slight’; mindful of his weakness he seeks no more than enough
to maintain life and from the store of his possessions he even shares with
have-nots because he is pious; and piety is the supreme virtue. 9 In addition,
he despises all pleasures that are temporary and vicious, and cause the
pursuit of wealth, because he is self-control led and master of his desires.
Equally, he acts without swagger or exaggeration, he doesn’t vaunt himself,
he doesn’t behave arrogantly, but is peaceful, agreeable, open and frank,
because he understands his own estate. 10 Since he does no one an injustice,
desires nothing of anyone el se’s, and does not even defend what is his if it is
taken from him by violence, and since he also knows how to endure any
injustice he may suffer with self-control because he has the gift of virtue, so
inevitably the just are subjected to the unjust and the wise endure the jibes of
the foolish: the one lot sin because they are unjust, and the others stick to
virtue because they are just.

11 If anyone wants to know more fully why God permits the wicked and
the unjust to become powerful, happy and rich whereas the pious exist in
lowliness, misery and poverty, he should take that book of Seneca's called
'Why good men meet much ill despite the existence of providence.' He has
much to say there, with a wisdom almost divine, well above the usual secular
ignorance. 12 'God,' 86 he says, 'treats people as free, but he permits the
corrupt and vicious to live in luxury and refinement because he doesn't think
them worth his correction. The good, however, whom he loves, he chastises
quite often, and gives them constant troubles to exercise their virtue, not
allowing them to become corrupt and depraved by goods that are perishable
and mortal.' 13 No one ought then to think it surprising if we are often
chastised for our faults by God. Indeed, it is when we are being particularly
hard pressed that we must give thanks to our father for his great kindness i n
not permitting our corruption to proceed any further, putting us right with

85 Cf. 18.4.

86 The consensus is that this is not a fragment of a lost work, but a paraphrase, done in the
style of Cicero, of passages in Sen. prov.: e.g., 1.6; 2.5-6; 3.3. See M onat (1973), ad loc.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

blows and beatings. That is how we know we matter to God: he gets angry
when we sin.

14 He could bestow both wealth and kingship on his people, as he once
did on thej ews, whose heirs and successors we are; but he wanted thej ews
to live under someone else's exercise of power so that they should not be
spoilt by the happy fortune of prosperity and slide into luxuriousness, des¬
pising his instructions as our ancestors did: yet the good things of this world
for all their fragility often unstrung them, so that they wandered off the path
of discipline and broke the bonds of law. 15 He took a good precaution,
therefore, in providing peace for his worshippers if they kept his command¬
ments and in correcting them, however, if they did not obey his word.

16 To prevent them from being corrupted by peace as their fathers were
by licence, he was content for them to come under pressure from those into
whose hands he put them in order to strengthen backsliders, to restore the
corrupted to full strength and to test and try the faithful. 17 How can a
general test the martial virtue of hismen unless he has an enemy? In hiscase
opponents emerge despite his wishes because he is mortal and capable of
being conquered; God, however, cannot be resisted, and so hecreates adver¬
saries for his name himself, not for them to fight against him as God, but
against his soldiers, so that he may prove or strengthen the faith and devotion
of his people until the blasts of oppression have restored their errant
discipline.

18 There is a further reason why he lets persecution come upon us: it
increases the number of God’s people, and it is not difficult to show why or
how that happens. 19 First, many are put off the worship of gods by their
loathing for cruelty; who wouldn’t shudder at sacrifice like that? Second,
some are simply content with virtue and faith. A certain number suspect
there is good reason for worship of gods being thought bad when so many
people who do think so would rather die than do what others do in order to
live. 20 Someone else wants to know what that good is which is defended
even unto death and which is preferred to all the happy precious things there
are in this life, and which people aren't put off by loss of goods or life or by
pain and disembowelling. 21 All that has great effect, but the principal
reasons for growth in our numbers have always been these: first, people
standing by hear us say amidst the tortures that we do not sacrifice to stones
shaped by human hands but to a living God who is in heaven. M any realise
this istrueand takeitto heart. 22 Second, as tends to happen when things are
unclear, and people are asking each other what the cause can be of this great
determination, lots of things get learnt of relevance to the faith which are

BOOK 5: JUSTICE

329

spread around and picked up as rumours, and because they are good things,
they are bound to satisfy. 23 Further, when vengeance follows, as it always
does, that is a strong encouragement to believe. A reason of no small weight
is this, that when unclean spirits of demons burrow, by permission, into the
bodies of many people and then get ejected, all who are restored to health
stick by the faith whose effectiveness they have experienced. 24 All these
reasons combined bring a great many people to God, in wonderful fashion.

Punishment is in store for the wicked

23.1AII the contrivances against us of evil princes, therefore, take pi ace with
God’s permission. Even so, those wicked persecutors who rail at God’s
name and mock it are not to think that they will get away with having been
the instruments of his wrath against us. 2 God will judge and punish those
who took his power and abused it without human limit, insulting even God
in their arrogance, and subjecting hiseternal name to thewicked and godless
trampling of their own footsteps. 3 Besides, it is his promise is to be avenged
upon them swiftly and to 'drive out evil beasts from the land' [Lev. 26:6],
Despite his custom of avenging the torments of his people, however, even
here in this world, nevertheless he bids us await with endurance the day of
divinejudgment when he himself will reward or punish each man according
to his deserts. 4 Those sacrilegious souls should not therefore hope that the
people they so oppress will go neglected and unavenged. Those rabid,
ravening wolves shall have their proper wages for torturing just and honest
souls who did no wrong.

5 Let us work, then, to ensure that by men we are punished for our
justice, and only for our justice; and let us work with all our strength to
deserve of God both the avenging and the reward of our suffering.

BOOK 6; TRUE WORKSHIP

God requires worship from the innocent, not sacrificial offerings from
plea sure-seekers

LlWith God’s spirit informing me and truth itself assisting I have now
fulfilled my duty towards the task I undertook. Reason for claiming and
clarifying truth was given me by my knowledge, by my faith and by our lord
himself, without whom nothing can be known, nothing can be explained. 1
2 I now come to the most important part of this work, my explanation of the
ritual and sacrifice appropriate to worship of God. 2 Worship is the duty of
man; the sum of things, and the entire aim of the life of bliss, consists in
worship alone; that is why we were created and given breath by him, not to
seethe heaven and the sun, as Anaxagoras thought, 3 but to worship in pure¬
ness and wholeness of mind the maker of the sun and the God of heaven.

3 In the preceding books I have defended truth to the best of my poor
ability, but now it can shine out in all its brilliance through worship itself. 4 AII
that is wanted from man by that holy and unique majesty is innocence. 4
Anyone who offers God innocence will be worshipping with piety and
religion enough, 5 but men neglect justice and befoul themselves with all
manner of wickedness and crime, and so think they are religious if they go
smearing temples and altars with the blood of victims and drenching hearths
with a profusion of fragrant old wine. 6 They even lay on sacred feasts and
offer up choice banquets as if there were something in it for their would-be
guests. Anything rarely seen, anything expensive to make or smell, they assume
is precious to their gods, judging not by any understanding of divinity (which
they do not have) but by their own desires; they do not realise that God has
no need of earthly wealth. All theirwisdom isearthbound, and they measure
good and evil by the sensation of physical pleasure alone: 7 that dominates
their view of religion, and it also controls their actions all their lives.

1 Cf. 5.4.1.

2 It is the centrality of sacrifice in the cult of the pagan gods which makes it essential that L.
tackle the subject.

3 Cf. 3.9.4. Anaxagoras was introduced at 1.5.18.

4 Innocence was signalled as a key virtue in 5.17.21, 24 and 31. See also note on 5.14.18.

BOOK 6: TRUE WORSHIP

331

Once they had moved away from contemplation of the sky and had
subdued their sense of heaven to the body, they gave free rein to their desires
as if they were going to carry pleasure off with them entirely: it is their
pressing aim every moment, even though the soul ought to have the body in
its employ and notthebody the soul. 8 In their judgment the greatest good is
wealth: if they cannot acquire it by good means, they acquire it by evil
means. They cheat, steal and rob, they lay traps and break their word, they
have no self-control or scruples, provided only that they can glitter with gold
and gleam in silver and jewelled clothes, and heap up wealth insatiably and
walk surrounded by crowds of slaves with the people at a distance. 9 By such
helpless submission to pleasure they destroy the power and vigour of their
minds, and plunge headlong towards death even while they think they are
living life to its full. 10 As I explained in book 2, 5 the business of heaven is
with the soul and the business of earth with the body. People who neglect the
good of the soul and go for the good of the body are busy with darkness and
death, which belong to earth and body, because life and light are from
heaven. In their enslavement to the body they know nothing of heaven: hence
their remoteness from any understanding of things divine. 11 Poor things,
the same blindness afflicts them everywhere. They no more know what true
worship is than they know who the true God is.

Their worship is earthly, while ours embodies justice, which to teach is
our duty and glory

21So they slaughter fine fat victims as if God were hungry, they pour out
wine as if he were thirsty, and they light lamps as if he were in the dark. 2 If
they could imagine or understand what those heavenly goods are whose
greatness we cannot perceive, wrapped up as we are in our earthly bodies,
they would instantly know theirown folly in these empty performances, 3 or
if they were willing to gaze at the heavenly light which we call the sun, they
would instantly realise how little God needs their lights when he himself is
donor of a light so bright and pure for the use of men. 4 Its orb issmall, and
because of its distance from us it seems no larger than a man’s head, and yet
it has such bri 11 iance that mortal eyes I ooki ng at it cannot sustai n thei r gaze,
and if you stare even briefly, your eyes are dulled and a dark fog comes over
them: what brilliance of light must we think exists where God himself is,
with whom there is no night at all? He kept that light under such control that

5 2 . 12 . 3 .

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it did no damage to living things with too much dazzle or too fierce a heat;
instead he granted them just as much light and heat as mortal bodies could
take or as the ripening of the crops required. 5 So if someone makes an
offering of candlewax to him who is the creator and giver of light himself,
are we to think the donor is in his right mind? 6 God requires of us a different
light, not a smoky light, but, as the poet says, a clear, bright light, the light of
themind (thatiswhy poets call us G6 photes 6 7 ): but that light can bedisplayed
only by the man who knows God. 7 Because their gods are of earth, they
need light to avoid being in darkness; because such worshippers have no
heavenly wisdom, they are brought to earth by the very cults they practise:
earth needs illumination, because its own form and nature are of darkness.
8 Hence they credit their gods with a human, not a heavenly perception,
thinking the gods find the same things needful and enjoyable as we do, who
need food when we are hungry, drink when we are thirsty, clothes when we
are cold, and light when the sun goes down in order to see.

9 The fact that those gods are dead men who once were alive is best
proved and best made intelligible by their worship, which is entirely of the
earth. There cannot be heavenly good in the effusion of animal blood that
fouls their altars, unless they think perhaps that gods feed on what men are
too disgusted to touch. 10 As for the man who proposed this heavy diet,
whether highwayman, adulterer, poisoner or parricide, he'll have a life of
utter bliss: he's the one they love and cherish, offering him everything he
could want. 11 Persius was right to mock superstitions of this sort in his
usual way [2.29-30]: 'What will your bribe be,’ he says, 'to buy the gods’
attention? Larded lights and intestines?' 12 As he obviously realised, there
was no need of meat to placate the heavenly majesty but a mind of purity, a
soul of justice, and 'a heart,' as Persius also says [2.74], 'rich with natural
honesty’. 13 The religion of heaven is not composed of things corrupt but of
the virtues of the soul which is the product of heaven, and true worship is the
worship in which the worshipper offers to God his own mind as his spotless
victim. 14 How that can be achieved and established will be explained in the
course of this book's argument.

Nothing can be so glorious and so properfora man as educating people
to be just. 15 In Cicero, Catulus says (in the H ortensius, when advancing
philosophy's cl aims above all others) that he would prefer one little book on

6 G indicates that L. uses or quotes G reek.

7 See note at 1.21.7. Photes is plural of phos, a man (or wight: the word is poetical); the
word for light is phos. Confusion of the declensions enabled L. to make a meaningful pun.

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duty to a long speech for the rebel Cornell us. 8 This view is not to bethought
of as simply Catulus’, who probably never delivered it, but Cicero's own,
and he wrote it, I imagine, as a trailer for the books on duty he was about to
write, in which he actually says that there is nothing in all philosophy better
and more rewarding than offering advice on life. 9 16 If it is done by people
who do not know the truth, however, all the more burden on us to do it, since
we have been trained and illuminated by God and we can offer advice which
is true. Not that our teaching will be of the sort to take people back to the
basic elements of virtue, which isan infinite task; letusadoptfor instruction
instead someone they think to be perfect already. 17 The advice they usually
offer on uprightness can stay (it is sound); we shall be adding a super¬
structure which they don’t know about, for the perfection and consummation
of justice; that is quite outside their grasp. 18 In fact I shall ignore things we
may have in common, in case it looks as if I am borrowing from people
whose errors I am determined to refute and expose.

Two paths, one leading to heaven and the other to hell

HThere are two paths, o emperor Constantine, along which human life
must proceed: one leads to heaven and the other plunges to the underworld.
Poets have presented them in their poetry, and so have philosophers in their
debates. 10 2 The philosophers at least have been happy for one path to be the
path of the virtues and the other the path of the vices, and for the one
assigned to the virtues to be initially steep and rough going; if anyone over¬
comes its difficulty and emerges on top, for the rest he has a level road, and
beautiful open country, and he reaps a fine, rich reward for all his labours;
3 but anyone deterred by the difficulty of the start si ides off on to the path of
vice, which is a pleasant path to begin with, and much more well trodden,
but after a little more progress, its pleasant appearance suddenly fades, and
it becomes precipitous, rough with rocks at one moment, overgrown with
brambles at another, and broken by fast flooding streams at a third, so that
strain, stalling, slipping and falling are inevitable.

4 All this is written up to a point where it is obvious that adopting the
virtues is very hard work, but once they have been adopted they are very

8 Cic. Hort. fr. 34 (Straume-Zimmermann).

9 Cic. Off, 2.6; 3.5; cf. 1.4.

10 See Verg. A. 6.540 (cited below); Plato, Gorg. 524a; and the famous story of the choice
of Hercules, attributed to the sophist Prodicus, in Xen. M em. 2.1.21-34. The idea is as old as
Hesiod: seeOp. 287-92.

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rewarding, bringing pleasure that is solid and unassailable, whereas the
vices use their natural powers of beguilement to entrap people’s souls, and
once people have been caught by pleasures that turn out to be empty, they are
drawn on into miseries of great bitterness and anguish. 5 The distinction is
shrewdly made, if only the form and end of the virtues themselves were
known. W hat the virtues are, however, and what reward God keepsforthem
had not been learnt. We shall explain that in these two final books.

Because they did not know or were unsure that men’s souls are im¬
mortal, so they measured both virtue and vice in terms of earthly rewards
and punishments. 6 All this debate about the two paths has as its objects
frugality and luxury. The philosophers say that the path of human life is like
the Ietter Y; 11 every human being, upon arrival at the threshold of adoles¬
cence, at the pi ace'where the road splits in both directions’, 12 will pause and
dither, and won't know which direction to prefer; 7 if he has a guide to point
him in the better way as he dithers - if, that is, he studies either philosophy
or oratory or some respectable skill which develops him successfully, and
only very hard work will achieve that- then, they argue, he will live his life
through in honourable plenty; 8 but if he does not find a teacher of frugality,
then he tumbles on to the bad road, which belies its appearance of being the
better: that is to say, he surrenders to sloth, idleness and self-indulgence,
which look attractive at the time if you don'tknow the true good; later, when
your reputation and property are all gone, you will live in total misery and
shame.

9 The philosophers thus understood the destinations of the two paths
physically, relating them to the life we live on earth. The poets have possibly
done better in wanting the division of ways to be in the underworld, but they
are wrong in claiming that the paths are for the dead. Both ideas have some
truth in them, but neither is right, since the paths themselves should have
been related to life and their destinations to death. 10 We can manage a
better truth content: we say those two paths are the paths to heaven and to the
underworld becausejust men have immortality ahead of them and the unjust
have eternal punishment.

11 How the two paths either raise us to heaven or plunge us to the nether
regions i will now explain, and i shall reveal what the virtues are which the
philosophers do not know; then I shall set out their rewards, and also what

11 The symbolic use of the letter was attributed by Latin authors to Pythagoras. See Pers.
3.56-57; Auson. Technopaegn. 13.9; Prof. 11.5; M artian. Cap. 2.102; Anth. Lat. 632 (Riese);
Isid. 1.3.7.

12 Verg. A. 6.540.

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335

the vices are and the punishments for them. 12 It might be expected that I
would speak of the vices and virtues separately, since whether my discus¬
sion was of good or of evil, its contrary could also be grasped. 13 Bring in
the virtues, and the vices will spontaneously withdraw; take away the vices,
and the virtues will be free to emerge. The nature of things good and evil is
so constituted that they attack each other and try to drive each other away in
a constant di ng-dong. Thus, the vices cannot be removed w i thout the vi rtues,
and the virtues cannot be brought in without removal of the vices.

14 We think of these paths very differently from the way the philoso¬
phers usually do. We say first that each path has its own immortal guide, the
one guide being honoured for having virtue and good in his charge and the
other damned for having vice and evil in his. 15 The philosophers posit a
guide for the righthand path only, and notjustoneguide, nor a constant one,
since they assume that any teacher of a respectable skill will do who can
rescue people from idleness and teach them to be thrifty. But the only
travellers they imagine on the path are boys and adolescents, presumably
because that is the time for learning such skills. 16 Webring to this heavenly
path people of every sex, race and age, because God who is lord of the path
denies immortality to no man born. The layout of the paths too is not what
they think. 17 W hat is the point of a Y for things that are quite contrary to
each other? The one path, the better path, faces the rising sun, and the other,
the worse one, faces west, because he who follows truth and justice will
receive the reward of immortality and will gain everlasting light, while the
man ensnared by that evil guide, the man who puts vice before virtue and
lies before truth, is bound to go west, down to eternal darkness. 18 I shall
therefore give a description of each path, demonstrating their particular
features.

4.1There is, then, one single path of virtue and good, leading not to the
Elysian fields, as the poets have it, but to the very citadel of the world. 'But
the lefthand path works the punishment of the evil, and despatches them to
wicked Tartarus', 13 2 and that belongs to the great accuser, who institutes
evil religions, diverts men from the heavenly way and sets them on the road
to perdition. 3 This path is presented to our gaze in such a form that it seems
smooth and open, and delectable with all sorts of flowers and fruit. God has
planted on it all the things that are treated on earth as good things: riches, I
mean, and distinction, peace and quiet, pleasure, all the usual traps; but

13 Verg. A. 6.542-43.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

amongst them he has also set injustice, cruelty, arrogance, treachery, lust,
greed, discord, ignorance, lies, folly, and the other vices. The exit from this
path is as follows: 4 when the end is reached (and turning back is not now
permitted), a cut through all the prettiness is made so suddenly that no one
sees the deception until he is tumbling head over heels, a vast depth down. 5
Anyone caught by the shimmer of immediate goods, busy acquiring and
enjoying them, unalert to what will follow after death and dividing himself
from God, will be hurled to the world below to be condemned to eternal
punishment.

6 The path to heaven, however, is presented as difficult and steep, rough
with bristling thorns or obstructed by blockage of rocks, so that everyone
must proceed with huge effort and torn feet, taking great pains not to fall. 7 On
this path God has planted justice, self-control, patience, loyalty, chastity,
abstinence, concord, knowledge, truth, wisdom, and the other virtues; but
among them he has also set poverty, degradation, hardship, pain and all sorts
of bitterness. 8 Anyone projecting his hopes into the future and preferring
the better way of life will do without the goods of earth in order to travel
light and so to defeat his journey's problems. No one surrounding himself
with the trappings of royalty or loading himself with wealth could enter
those straits and keep his foothold. 9 Hence the perception that for men of
evil and injustice, their desires progress more easily because their path slopes
down, whilegood men's hopes go forward with difficulty because they tread
a steep and difficult path.

10 Because the just man has taken on a tough and uncomfortable
journey, he is bound to be the object of contempt, derision and loathing. All
people drawn unstoppably by desire or pleasure are jealous of a man who
has been able to grasp virtue, and they take it as unfair that he has something
which they do not. 11 He will be poor, humble, unimportant, 14 and open to
attack, and yet he will also be patient of all the unpleasantness; if he main¬
tains that patience unbroken through to the final stage, however, he will be
given a crown for his virtue, and for the sufferings he endured in life for
justice's sake he will be rewarded by God with immortality.

12 T hese are the paths that G od has marked out for human I ife. 0 n each
he has displayed both good and bad, butin reverseorder. On hisown path he
has shown temporary evils first, together with goods for ever, which is the

14 L.’sadjectives, pauper, humilis, ignobilis, repeatCicero'snounsfTusc. 5.29): paupertas,
ignobilitas, humilitas. What had been base qualities for Classical writers are in patristic
literature the hallmarks of a true Christian.

BOOK 6: TRUE WORSHIP

337

better arrangement, and on the other path he has shown temporary goods
first, together with eternal evils, which is the worse arrangement, so that
anyone choosing immediate evil together with justice will attain goods that
are greater and more sure than those he rejected, while anyone putting
immediate good before justice will tumble into evils which are greater and
longer lasting than those he avoided. 13 Because this life of the body is
short, so its evils and its goods are bound to be short too, whereas because
the life of the spirit, which istheoppositeof thisearthly life, isforalways, so
its goods and its evils are sempiternal too. 14The pattern isthat brief good is
succeeded by evil for ever, and brief evil is succeeded by good for ever.

Since, then, man has goods and evils before him, each individual should
sort out with himself how much more satisfactory it is to weigh brief evils
against perpetual goods rather than endure perpetual evils in return for brief
and perishable goods. 15 In this world, when there is a fight beforeyou with
some enemy, you must work hard at the start in order to have peace
thereafter, and you must go hungry and thirsty and put up with heat and cold,
and sleep on the ground, keep watch and take risks in order to keep your
children, home and family safeand then beableto enjoy all the good things
of peace and victory to their full; 16 but if you prefer peace now to the hard
work, you are bound to causeyourself maximum evil: yourfoewill seize the
initiative if you don't resist, your fields will be laid waste and your home
pillaged, and your wife and children will become his prey and you yourself
will be killed or captured; to avoid all that you must put off immediate
comfort so that a greater and more lasting comfort is produced in the end.

17 So it is throughout our life here. Because God kept a foe for us so that
we could acquire virtue, immediate pleasure must be set aside in case the
adversary strikes; you must keep watch and post guards, you must go out
campaigning like a soldier, and shed your blood to the last drop; you must
put up patiently with all manner of foulness and pressure, and all the more
readily because God our commander-in-chief has given us eternal rewards
for our hardships. 18 Since people on the earthly campaign use up all their
energies only to get themselves what can perish the way it was won, we
certainly must shirk no labour: we are winning what cannot possibly be
lost. 15

15 The idea of life on earth as a spiritual struggle in the militia Dei was introduced in earlier
books. See 4.4.15-17; 5.19.25-26. This is the only 'warfare' that L. allows. For condemnation
of soldiery as a profession, see 20.16 below; cf. Tert. coron. 11, idol. 19, etc; in general,
Pucciarelli (1987).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

19 That is the service that man was made for: God wanted him to stand
in the front line stripped for action, watching with fierce intensity the
manoeuvres or the open assaults of his one and only foe. Our adversary is for
ever doing what skilled and practised generals do, trying to catch us with
different tricks and adapting his ferocity to our individual behaviour patterns.
20 Some he infects with an insatiable greed, in order to bind them with the
fetters of their wealth and so knock them off the path of truth; others he
provokes with pricks of wrath, to make them concentrate on hurting people
and to wrench them away from contemplation of God; others he drowns in
uncontrollable lust, so that their obedience to the pleasures of the flesh
prevents them keeping focussed on virtue; others he inspires with envy, so
that they are busy tormenting themselves, thinking only of their hated
objects' happiness. 21 Some he puffs up with ambition: they devote all their
life's effort and energy to exercising public office, so that they stand in the
annals and give their name to the year. 22 Some in their greed aim higher, not
wanting to be briefly military commander of some province, but to be called
lords of the whole human race, with infinite and perpetual power. 16 23 Any
he sees to be pious he entangles in a variety of religions, to make them
impious. Those who seek wisdom he dazzles with philosophy, to blind them
with the semblance of light in case they grasp the truth and stick to it.
24 Thus he tries to block off all our approaches and obstruct all our paths,
jubilant to see us go astray. But God gave us light and armed us with the true,
celestial virtue so that we could shake off our misdirections and overcome
the author of evil himself. That virtue is now my topic.

Knowledge is not virtue: it precedes virtue

SIBeforel start to set out the virtues one by one, however, virtueitself must
be defined. The philosophers were not right about what it was or its
circumstances, or what its work and its business were. All they kept of it was
its name; its force, reason and effect they lost. 2 Everything they usually say
by way of definition is well summarised in a few verses of Lucilius; to avoid
being overlong in my refutation of many people's views, I have chosen to
quote them here.

3 Virtue, my dear Albinus, is the power

to pay the true price for our way of life.

16 HereL. is disparaging about political and military ambition.

BOOK 6: TRUE WORSHIP

339

It is to know what each thing has for us;

to know what’s useful, honourable and right,

what’s good, what’s bad, useless, dishonest, foul;

to know the aim and end in all you seek;

the power to pay the price that wealth is worth;

to give to honour what it’s truly owed;

to be a bad man’s enemy and foe,

but also to defend the honest man,

prizing him, wishing him well, befriending him;

then, to believe your country’s needs come first,

your parents' next, and third and last your own. 17

4 Cicero derived his Officia from these brief definitions of the poet, follow¬
ing theStoic Panaetius, and wrote them up in three volumes. 18 We shall see
in a moment how mistaken they are, which will show how much divine
regard has favoured us in revealing us the truth. 5 Virtue, said the poet, is
knowing what’sgood and bad, what’sfoul, what’s honourable, what’suseful
and what’s not. He could have put it more briefly if he had said just good and
bad, because nothing can be useful and honourable without it also being
good, and nothing can be useless and foul without it also being bad. Such
was the philosophers' view, and so said Cicero, in Book 3 of the work
mentioned.

6 Knowledge cannot be virtue, however, because it does not exist within
us: it comes to us from outside. A nything with the power of passing from one
person to another cannot be virtue si nee virtue is personal. Thus knowledge
is dependent on someone else’s goodness because it depends on listening,
whereasvirtue is entirely ourown because it depends on thewill to do good.
7 Knowing the route is no use in undertaking a journey unless the will and
strength to walk are there; likewise, knowledge is no use if the personal
virtue is missing.

8 Even sinners pretty well know, however imperfectly, what good and
bad are, and every time they do something wrong they know they are
sinning, and that’s why they try to conceal it. 9 Although the nature of good
and evil does not escape them, nevertheless they are victims of an evil desire,
so that they sin because they lack a virtue, the virtue of wanting to act rightly

17 Lucil. fr. 1196-1208 (Warmington) = 23 (Charpin) = 1326-1338 (M arx).

18 One may be sceptical of the alleged influence of Luciliuson Cicero'sde Officiis; the debt
to Panaetius is acknowledged at Off. 2.60 and 3.7.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

and honestly. lOThatknowledgeof good and evil isonething and thatvirtue
is another is plain from the fact that knowledge can exist without virtue, as
has been the case with so many philosophers. And since it is rightly a matter
for blame not to have done what you knew you should, so it is right for a
corrupted will and a vicious soul to be punished; ignorance is no excuse. 11
Virtue is thus not knowing good and evil; it is, rather, doing good and not
doing evil.

And yet, knowledge is connected to virtue in such a way that it precedes
virtue and virtue comes after, because knowing is no use unless doing
follows it up. 12 Horace put it a little better: 'Virtue, and the prime wisdom,
is to flee vice.' 19 Even so, he puts it poorly; he has defined virtue by its
contrary, as if he were saying 'Good is what is not bad.’ W hen I don't know
what virtue is, then I don't know what vice is either; thus each term lacks
definition, because the nature of the situation is such that either both or
neither must be intelligible.

13 Let us do Horace's work for him, however: 'Virtue is to contain
wrath, to control desire, to restrain lust: that is to flee vice.’ Nearly all unjust
or evil actions arise from those impulses. 14 If the energy in the emotion
called wrath were blunted, all men’s evil quarrels would be put to sleep, no
onewould lay traps, and no one would leap out to cause harm. 15 Likewise,
if greed werecontrolled, no onewould go robbing on land or sea and no one
would create an army to go pillaging and wrecking what belongs to other
people; 16 likewise, if the passion of lust were suppressed, every age and sex
would retain its own sanctity and no one would either suffer or commit any
act of shame. 20 17 If these impulses were laid to rest by virtue, every
possible crime and wickedness would be removed from people's lives and
behaviour. This allaying of our emotional impulses has as its purpose that all
our actions are right actions. 18 The whole business of virtue is thus not to
sin. Anyone ignorant of God is incapable of carrying this out, of course,
because ignorance of the source of our good is bound to make such a person
unaware with regard to vice. 19 To put the shortest and most meaningful
label on the chief business of each, knowledge is knowing God, and virtue is
worshipping him: wisdom is contained in the one, and justice in the other. 21

19 Ep. 1.1.41. L. has stopped in mid-sentence: Horace added, 'and the prime wisdom is to
be free from stupidity'.

20 An early glimpse in this book of L.'s anti-imperialist sentiments. The juxtaposition of
public greed and private lusts is striking.

21 In joining together wisdom and justice (as worship), L. has returned to the theme of Book
1, the unity of sapientia and religio.

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Only the justand wise know the nature of virtue

&1I have made my first point, that knowledge of good is not virtue, and my
second point, about the nature and content of virtue; it follows that I must
now briefly demonstrate the ignorance of the philosophers about the nature
of good and evil too. This was more or less set out in book 3, when I was
discussing the supreme good. 22 2 People ignorant of the supreme good are
bound also to be in error about the other goods and evils which are not
supreme; a true judgment of them cannot be made by anyone not grasping
the source from which they come down to us.

3 The source of good is God, and the source of evil is of course that
constant enemy of the divine name, of whom we have often spoken. These
are the twin origins of good and evil. 4 What comes of God has as its purpose
the preparation of immortality, which is the supreme good. W hat comes of
that other has as its business the separation of man from things celestial, his
immersion in things earthly and his killing, with a view to his punishment
forever, which is the supreme evil. 5 Without a doubt, all those philosophers
who did not know God and God's adversary must also have been ignorant of
what good and evil are. 6 No wonder they related the purpose of good to our
brief life in the flesh (which is obviously bound to break up and collapse)
and got no further; all their advice, and all the good things they infer belong
to earth and stick to it, because when the body (which is earth) dies, they die
too. 7 That sort of good has nothing to do with gaining a man life: it is
focussed on finding and augmenting wealth, distinction, fame and power,
and those are all mortal things, just as much as the man who toiled to achieve
them is. Hence the phrase 'Virtue: to know the aim and end in all you seek.'

8 The philosophers give advice on the methods and skills appropriate for
getting going in life because they see it is something usually done badly; but
that is not the sort of virtue a wise man contemplates: virtue is not the quest
for wealth; finding wealth and keeping it is not within our power. Hence the
fact that wealth is easier for bad men to find and keep than for good men.

9 Virtue cannot therefore exist in seeking out those things which its own
power and purpose plainly despise, nor will it switch to exactly what it is
eager to trample high-mindedly underfoot, nor is it right that a soul intent
on goods of heaven should be diverted from its proper immortal wealth to
earn itself stuff so fragile. The point of virtue really consists most of all in
achieving those things which no man, nor even death, can take away from
us.

22 3.7-12.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

10 This being so, the next line is true: 'Virtue: the power to pay the price
that wealth is worth.'This has more or less the same meaning as the first two
lines. But neither Luci I i us nor any of the philosophers had the power to know
what the price was, or its nature. He and all the people he foil owed thought
it meant using one's wealth properly, being frugal, that is, not laying on lavish
parties, not being recklessly generous, not wasting one's substance on unneces¬
sary orunworthy objects. 23 11 Someone will say perhaps, 'What about you?
Don't you think that is virtue?' I do, because if I said no, it would look as if
I approved of the opposite; but I also say it is not the true virtue, because it
is not the celestial one but is wholly of earth, because it produces only what
stays on earth. I shall set out more plainly what the proper use of wealth is
and what its fruits should be when I start my section on the duties of piety.

12 AII thecontinuation isalso entirely untrue. Declaring hostilities against
the wicked or undertaking the defence of the good can both be actions
shared with bad people. 13 Some work their way to power by pretending to
be good: they do a great deal that good people usually do, and all the more
readily because they are doing it in order to deceive. If only it were as easy
to practise goodness as it is to pretend it! 14 But once these people begin to
get their target in their sights, and have taken the ultimate step to power, they
lay aside pretence and reveal their true colours: it’s smash, grab and harry
everything, and even attack the good people themselves whose defence they
once undertook, and the steps they climbed they now cutoff, in case anyone
else should have the power to copy them against themselves.

15 Let us assume, however, that this duty of defending the good belongs
only to the good man. It is an easy task to take up, but a difficult one to fulfil.
W hen you commit yourself to the struggle and the contest, the victory is in
God’s power, not in yours, and often the wicked are more powerful than the
good both in number and in combination, so that their defeat depends not so
much on virtue as on luck. 16 Everyone knows, I take it, how often the losers
are the better and the juster party. That is why communities have always
been subject to vicious tyrannies. 17 All history is full of examples, but we
will be content with one. Pompey the Great set out to be defender of the
good, since he took up arms on behalf of the republic, the senate and liberty.
But he was conquered, and fell with liberty itself, and was left headless and
graveless by Egyptian eunuchs. 24

23 Cf. Cicero's discussion of liberalitas in Off. 2.52-65; and ch. 11 below.

24 On Pompey, cf. 7.15.16. In favouring Pompey and being hostile to Caesar (called killer
of his country at 1.15.29), L. is perhaps following the line taken by Lucan in his epic poem on
the Civil War.

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343

18 Virtue is thus not a matter of being enemy of the bad or defender of
the good, because virtue cannot be subject to uncertainty. 'Virtue: to believe
your country's needs come first’ is, in the absence of human discord, utterly
without substance. 19 W hat are a country’s i nterests other than the disadvan¬
tage of some other community or people? Working land stolen from others
by violence, for instance, expanding one’s own power and levying heavier
taxes: none of those is a virtue; they are the overthrow of virtue. 25 20 First of
all, the ties of human society are removed, and so is innocence, and
abstention from property of others, and justice itself: justice cannot endure
division in the human race. W herever the weapons flash, there is her inevit-
ableroutand expulsion. 21 WhatCicero said [Off. 3.28] istrue: 'Peoplewho
want citizens’ interests heeded and those of non-citizens denied are
dismissing the fellowship we share as human beings, and when that goes, so
do kindness, generosity, goodness and justice in their entirety.’ 22 How can
a man be just who does harm, who hates, who ravages, who kills? And all
those are actions of people striving to do their country good. People who
think that the only useful or advantageous thing is something you can grasp
simply do notknow what doing good is. Butwhatyou can grasp, another can
grab. 23 So anyone who goes for these 'goods of his country’, as they
themselves cal I them - anyone, thatis, who destroys communities, wipesout
nations, fills the treasury with money, grabs land and makes his fellow
citizens richer - is lauded to heaven, and people think he is the embodiment
of perfect virtue.

This is a mistake made not only by the ignorant mob but also by
philosophers; they also give their advice on injustice, in case folly and
malice should lack the authority of discipline. 24 So when they debate the
duties relevant to time of war, nothing they have to say is aimed at justice
and true virtue: it is all aimed at the life and behaviour of citizens present,
which is not justice, as reality shows and as Cicero himself bears witness.
25 'We have,’ he says [Off. 3.69], 'no firmly shaped model of true law and
genuine justice; we work with a vague outline. If only we followed it! It
comes from the best examples in nature and truth.’ So what they thought
justice is only a shadowy approximation of it! 26 Well? Doesn't Cicero also
admit that there is no wisdom among the philosophers? 'Or when Fabricius
[or A ristides] is called just,’ he says [Off. 3.16], 'either they offer a model of

25 This discussion is derived, as is 23 below, from a missing section of Furius’ speech
against justice in Cic. Rep. 3.12.20. See Ziegler, rep., ad loc. L. draws for his own purposes on
what were ultimately arguments of Carneades.

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courage or he offers a wise man’s model of wisdom. 26 None of them was
wise in the sense in which we want wise to be understood; 27 27 Cato and
Laelius weren't wise, despite being treated so and being called so; nor were
the Seven Sages wise, though they performed many middle level duties and
so had the look of wise men.' 28 If then wisdom is denied to the philosophers
on their own admission, and justice is denied to those treated as just, all
those descriptions of virtue are bound to be false, since only a just and wise
man can know what true virtue is. But the only just and wise man is the one
educated by God with instruction from heaven.

Both paths can mislead the unwary

7.1AII the people who through the admitted stupidity of others are thought
to be wise are clad in a semblance of virtue, but are grasping at a vague
outline, not at what is true. It happens like that because the path that goes
west is a deceiving path, with many lanes leading off it because of the great
diversity of study and learning; 28 some human studies actually go in opposite
directions. 2 The path of wisdom bears some resemblance to that of folly, as
we showed i n the previous book; so too, though the path of folly is total ly the
path of folly, it has some resemblance to that of wisdom (those who think
folly is universal are welcome to the idea); its vices are obvious, but it also
has some apparent resemblance to virtue; its badness is clear, but it also has
some of the appearance of justice. 3 How could our precursor on the path,
whose whole driving force lies in deception, draw everybody into his
deception unless he offered them something looking like truth? After all, to
keep his immortal secret under cover 29 God put things on his own path for
people to shun as if they were disgracefully bad, so that when they had
wandered off wisdom and truth (which they were looking for with no guide
at all) they would tumble into exactly what they wanted to avoid and escape.
4 Hence all the twists and turns on the road to perdition and death, put there
to match the multiplicity of lifestyles or else the multiplicity of gods being
worshipped.

26 Aristides' place in Cicero's text is doubted. In ‘either they offer a model of courage',
‘they' refers to the Decii and the Scipios mentioned at the start of Cicero's sentence but the
pronoun is irrelevant in L ,'s context and so omitted.

27 Cf. Off. 1.46; 2.35.

28 This appears to be a til tat the educational system of which L. was himself a leading light;
cf. 3.7 above.

29 For the idea that God has hidden the truth, cf. 2.3.21; 4.8.8.

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5 In order to show some difference between falsehood and truth and
between evil and good, our conspiratorial and treacherous guide takes every¬
body to his road by different ways, sybarites one way and the frugal another;
so too the ignorant and the educated, the lazy and the energetic, the fool sand
the philosophers (not that philosophers all go the same way!). 6 Those with
no qualms about pleasures and riches he marshals at a little distance from
this busy highway, while those earnestly pursuing virtue and professing a
contempt for possessions he hauls over sheer rocky drops. 7 Nevertheless,
all these routes which appear to lead to good are not different roads, but side-
turnings and byways; they look different from the main road, as if they bore
off to the right, but they all comeback to it in the end; every one of them has
the same outcome. 8 0 ur guide bri ngs everybody together at the point where
separation must be made of good from evil, of brave from cowards, of wise
from foolish, and that point is worship of gods, and there he kills them all
with a single stab because they were fools without distinction, and plunges
them into death.

9 The road, however, which is the path of truth, wisdom, virtue and
justice (all of which have one and the same origin, one and the same force
and one and the same home) is not only a simple road on which we may
follow and worship the one God with like minds in total concord, but also a
narrow road, because rather few have the gift of virtue, and also a steep road,
because without the utmost toil and trouble the good which is the supreme
and sublime good cannot be reached at all.

To follow God's law is to follow the right road

&lThis is the road the philosophers seek, but because they seek it on earth,
where it cannot appear, they fail to find it. 2 They are like people all at sea,
not know i ng w here they are going, because they cannot see thei r ri ght course
and they follow no guide. 3 This path of life is one to besought in the same
way that ships seek their courses at sea: if they have no light in the sky to
watch, the course is not cl ear and they stray. 4 Anyone striving to keep on the
right course must not look attheland but at the sky; to put it more plainly, he
must follow not man but God, he must submit not to these earthly images but
to God in heaven, he must not relate everything to the body but to the mind,
and he must not heed this life but the eternal life. 5 If you kept your gaze
fixed on heaven and watched where the sun rises, using itasyour life's pilot,
your feet will find their path of their own accord, and that light of heaven
which is a far brighter sun to sane minds than this sun we see in our mortal

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flesh will so guide you and steer you that it will bring you without any
straying at all to the ultimate haven of wisdom and virtue.

6 God’s law is therefore the one to adopt to bring us on to this course,
that sacred and heavenly law which Cicero described in almost godlike
terms in book 3 de Republica. To avoid prolixity I quote his words [3.33].
7 'True law is right reason, in accord with nature, universally distributed,
consistent, perpetual, summoning men to theirduty and deterring them from
deceit with orders positive and negative; its orders whether positive or
negative are not wasted on good men, nor do they change the behaviour of
bad men. 8 It is not right for this law to be superseded; no subtraction from
it is permitted; no suspension of it is possible: we cannot be released from it
either by senate or by people, and no Sextus A eli us 30 is needed to explain it
or to interpret it; 9 it will not be one law in Rome and a different law in
Athens, one law now and different at a later date; all nations will be bound
by it at all times, for it is one, eternal and immutable, and there will be one
god, the common master and commander of us all; he was the one who
wrote this law, explained it and enacted it. Anyone not obedient to him will
be in flight from himself, and even if he avoids all other punishments
imaginable, for defying his human nature he will pay the supreme penalty.’
10 No one with knowledge of God’s mystery could possibly setforth God’s
law as meaningfully as that is expressed, and expressed by a man far from
knowledge of the truth. M y view of people who speak the truth unawares is
that they divine it by some spiritual instinct. 11 But if Cicero had also known
or explained what instructions the holy law itself consists in as clearly as he
saw its force and reason, he would have fulfil led the role not of a philosopher
but of a prophet. 12 That, however, he could not do, and so we must: it is to
us that the law has been given by that one God who is master and
commander of us all.

Knowledge of God is the head, and the practice of justice is the limbs;
the promise of eternity justifies a life of virtue

9.1T he principal head of this law is to know God himself, to obey him alone
and to worship him alone. No one can understand the meaning of man who
failsto know God as parent of hissoul.Thatisthesupremewickedness.That
is the ignorance which makes a man serve other gods, and no worse crime

30 Sextus A eli us was a famous statesman and jurist of the early 2nd cent. BC. See Cic. de
Orat. 1.198 (citing Ennius): 240.

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can be committed than that. 2 I gnorance of the true and unique good makes
the step from hereto evil an easy glide: goodness comes from the very God
whom men shrink from knowing. 31 Or if they want to pursue justice,
nevertheless in their ignorance of God’s law people will embrace their own
laws as if they were the true law, when they are simply the product of
expediency and not of justice. 3 Why are there so many different legal systems
all over the world, unless it is because each individual nation endorses what
it thinks beneficial to its own interests? 4 The gap between justice and
expediency is well demonstrated by the people of Rome, who got them¬
selves control of the whole world by using Fetials 32 to declare wars and by
using forms of law to cover their wrongdoings and to seize and take other
people's property. 5 These Romans think they are just if they do nothing
against their own laws; but that can be put down to fear, if they kept from
crime for fear of instant punishment. 6 Let us grant, however, that they do
what their laws compel them to do naturally or, as the philosopher puts it,
spontaneously. 33 Does obedience to human institutions make them just,
when human beings themselves have been quite capable of error or injustice,
like the authors of the Twelve Tables, or have certainly bowed to public
convenience to suit the situation? 7 Civil law, which varies everywhere
according to custom, is quite different from true justice, which is uniform
and simple, being God's provision for us all; and anyone ignorant of God is
bound to be ignorant of true justice also.

8 Let us imagine, however, the possibility of someone grasping the true
virtues by some natural, inborn good: the sort of man we hear that Cimon
was in Athens, who gave food to the needy, took in the poor, clothed the
naked; 34 and yet, when that one thing of supreme importance is missing, the
knowledge of God, all those good things are suddenly superfluous and
futile, so that he laboured to achieve them in vain. 9 All his justice will be
I ike a human body without its head: though every limb keeps place and form
and use, nevertheless for want of the most important piece of all, life and
sensation are utterly missing. 10 Those limbs thus have only the appearance
of limbs without the use, much like a head without a body. So too with a

31 See note on 6.19. The next three sentences probably have the same origin.

32 In theory, the Romans did not wage war without an ultimatum, delivered by the
priesthood of the Fetiales, demanding of the enemy restoration or compensation. See Cic. Off,
1.34-36 and 80; Rep. 2.31 (cf 26 on Numa). Despite Cicero's claim, it is clear that the fetial
procedure was manipulated in the cause of Roman expansionism.

33 Cf. Cic. Rep. 1.3; Leg. 1.49.

34 See A then. Deipn. 533a-c (citing Theopompus); Plu. Cim. 10.1-2; M iliett (1989), 23-25.

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person who is not ignorant of God but who is living without justice: all he
has i s the most i important piece, but it is no use, because it is missi ng the I i mbs,
the virtues. 11 For a body to be alive and to have sensation, knowledge of
God is necessary as head, and all the virtues are necessary as body. That will
produce a man live and perfect, but the sum total of him depends on the
head, si nee it cannot exist in the absence of all the other parts, butitcan exist
in the absence of some. 12 It will be a faulty, handicapped creature, but it
will live, just like someone who knows God and is in some respect a sinner;
there is forgiveness from God for sins. Life is thus possible without some
limbs, but quite impossible without a head.

13 Hence the phenomenon of philosophers who are good enough by
nature but have no knowledge or wisdom. All their learning and virtue lacks
a head, because they do not know God who is the head of virtue and
learning. Someone who does not know God may be able to see, but he is
blind; he may beableto hear, butheisdeaf; and he may beableto speak, but
he is dumb. 14 B ut when he does know the founder and father of the world,
then he will see and hear and speak: he begins to have a head, in which all the
senses are located, the eyes, that is, the ears and the tongue. 15 For seeing is
most surely seeing when the eyes of the mind see the truth in which God
exists or God in whom truth exists, and hearing is most surely hearing when
God’s words of advice on life are stamped upon the heart, and speech is most
surely speech when talk of things celestial leads to talk of the virtue and
majesty of the one and only God.

16 The impiety of those who do not know God is thus certain; all the
virtues which they think they have and hold may be found on the path of
death, which is wholly made of darkness. 17 There is no reason for anyone
to congratulate himself upon obtaining these futile virtues; such a person is
bound to be not only wretched in lacking immediate goods but also stupid in
toiling so hard through lifeto no effect. 18 If the hope of immortality which
God promises to those who practise his religion is taken away - and it is for
the sake of acquiring immortality that virtue must be sought and all
incidence of evil be endured - then it will certainly be a great piece of silli¬
ness to bind oneself deliberately to those virtues which bring man calamity
and troubleto no purpose. 35 19 If it is virtue to undergo need, exile, pain and
death, which everyone else is afraid of, and to bear them with courage, what
good hasvirtuein itself to makephilosophers say thatitshould besoughtfor
its own sake? People are surely taking pleasure in pains that are superfluous

35 Cf. 5.18.1-11.

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and futile, when they could be living in peace. 20 If souls are mortal, and no
virtue will exist when the body disintegrates, why do we shun the good
things provided for us as if we are not glad or fit to enjoy God's gifts? In
order to have these goods we must live in crime and irreligion, because
virtue - justice, that is - is followed by poverty. 21A man must be mad who
has no greater hope before him and yet puts toil, torture and misery in front
of the good things which everyone else enjoys in life.

22 If, however, virtue is to to besought, as they most correctly say, on the
grounds that man was born to that end, there ought to be some greater hope,
to bring great and notable comfort for the evils and difficulties which it is
virtue's part to endure. Virtue is hard enough already: it cannot beheld a good
thing unless its harshness is balanced by some very great good. 23 Equally,
abstention from immediate goods is impossible unless there are other,
greater, goodswhich make it worthwhileto missouton pleasures and to put
up with all manner of evil. But there are no other goods, as I explained in
book 3, except those of life everlasting. And only God can provide life ever¬
lasting, the God who has put virtue before us. 24 Everything therefore turns
on recognition and worship of God. That is the key to all man’s hope of
salvation; the first step to wisdom is to know who our true father is, to
worship him alone with due piety, to obey him, and to serve him with utter
devotion; our every deed, every thought, every effort must be aimed at
earning his approval.

Society is based on mutual love and care

XCXISo much for what is due to God. Now I shall say what is due to man -
though whatever you grant to man, you also grant to God, since man is the
likeness of God. 2 Nevertheless: the prime activity of justice is connexion
with God; then comes connexion with man. That first activity is called
religion; the second is termed compassion, or humanity. It is an especial
virtue of the just and the worshippers of God, because it alone contains the
meaning of our life together.

3 God did not endow the rest of his creation with wisdom, but he made
them comparatively safe from attack and danger by giving them natural
defences. M an on the other hand he created naked and frail: in order to equip
man in particular with wisdom, he gave him this emotion of piety in
addition, so that man would protect man, and they would love and cherish
each other and give each other help against all dangers. 4 The greatest bond
between people is their humanity; anyone who breaks that tie must be

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considered an evil man and a parricide. If we all spring from the one man 36
whom God made, then we are certainly linked by blood: hence the great
crime it must be to hate someone, even one who causes harm. 5 God pre¬
sumably said that we must never rouse up enmity but always try to remove it
so that we can remind any who are our enemies of their relationship with us
and so moderate their feelings. 6 So too, if we have all been given the breath
of life by one and the same God, we must all be brothers, and closer than
brothers too, being brothers in spirit rather than in the flesh. 7 Lucretius is
right when he says [2.991-92]: 'Finally, we are all sprung from celestial
seed, and all share an identical father.’ 8 People who do harm to a man are to
be seen as savage beasts therefore; contrary to all law of humanity and all
that is right they rob, they torture, they kill and they banish.

This sibling relationship is why God instructs us to do evil never and
good always. 9 Exactly what doing good is he has prescribed himself: it is to
give help to people in sorrow and trouble and to share food with those who
have none. 10 God deliberately made us a social animal because of his own
piety; we need to see ourselves in others. We deserve no liberation from
danger if we give no help ourselves, and we deserve no help if we deny it to
others. 11 The philosophers have no advice to give in this area because they
are victims of a bogus virtue; they have removed pity from man, 37 and
despite a desire to heal him they have corrupted him. 12 They do generally
admit that the ties of human fellowship should be maintained, but it is
obvious that they detach themselves from them by the rigour of their own
i nhuman vi rtue. T hat is yet another mi stake to be exposed i n those w ho thi nk
nothing should be shared with anyone.

13 Philosophers have put forward more than one reason for the founding
of cities. Some say that the people who were first born of earth led a nomadic
life in forest and field and had no common bond of speech or law to keep
them together; they used leaves and grass for beds, and caves and grottoes
for homes, and they fell prey to wild beasts and more powerful animals.
14 The ones who were mauled and escaped, or who saw their neighbours
being mauled, then ran to other people, aware now of their peril, and begged
for help; at first they indicated their wishes by nodding; later they made first
attempts at speech; by giving names to individual objects they slowly
perfected a system of talking. 15 When peoplesaw how many there were to

36 In introducing Christian charity as something derived from the virtue of piety, L. is
Christianising a traditional Classical theme, as he did in ch. 3 above.

37 L.’s target is Stoicism. See ch. 11 below.

BOOK 6: TRUE WORSHIP

351

be protected against wild beasts, they began to build towns, to keep their
nights safe and quiet or to keep the raids and incursions of the beasts at bay,
not by fighting but by throwing up barriers. 38

16 Nonsense I ike that is unworthy of human intelligence. W hat poor and
sorry people, to record their folly in writing! 17They could see that the dumb
beasts also had a natural ability to come together for mutual help, to avoid
danger, to watch out for harm or to make lairs and retreats for themselves,
and yet they thought that only example could warn man himself and teach
him what he should fear and flee and do; otherwise men would never have
come together, nor found a cause for speech, if the beasts hadn’t gobbled
them up! 18 Others thought this was crazy, which it was, and they said that
being mauled by beasts was not the cause of people uniting; humanity itself
was rather the cause, and that was why people met: it was human nature to
shun loneliness and to seek out company and fellowship.

The disagreement between them is not great; though their reasons are
different, the outcome is the same. 19 Both points of view are possible
because there is no contradiction between them, but neither is true at all,
because all over the world people are not born from earth as if they were
seeded from the teeth of some dragon, as poets say; rather, one man was
created by God, and from him and him alone the whole earth has been filled
with human stock, in the same way presumably that it was filled again after
the flood, and that is a fact they cannot deny. 20 There was thus no initial
meeting between men on that basis, and anyone capable of reason will
understand that there have never been people on earth who couldn't speak
except as infants. 21 We can pretend, however, that what old folk say in their
idle folly is true, so that we can refute them best of all with their own
perceptions and arguments.

22 If people came together in order to shore up their own feebleness by
exchange of aid, then help must go to the man who needs it. 23 For since men
have set up and endorsed association with their fellow men for the sake of
protection, then violation or non-preservation of that association, observed
as it is among men since its first coming, must be considered the supreme
sin. 24 Anyone who withdraws from offering help is bound to withdraw
from receiving help as well: anyone denying his own assistance to a neigh¬
bour must think he needs no one else's himself. 25 Anyone who detaches

38 Cf. Cic. Rep. 1.39ff.; Scipio finds the origin of communities not in weakness but in a
natural human tendency to forgather, naturalis quaedam hominum quasi congregatio. L., how¬
ever, finds a role for weakness in its provision of opportunity for charitable giving (see 22 below).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

himself from society and keeps apart must live I ike the wild beasts and not
like a man. But that is impossible; and so the bonds of human fellowship
must be maintained, because no way can man exist without man. M ainten-
ance of fellowship is sharing: offering help, that is, in order to be able to
receive it. 26 B ut if people come together for the sake of humanity itself, as
those others argue, then man mustcertainly acknowledge man. 27 Butif that
has been done by people ignorant and still uncivilised, and done when a
system of speech had not yet been established, what are we to think should
be done by people of education, linked to each other by exchanges of
conversation and everything else, who cannot endure loneliness because
they are used to their fellow human beings?

C harity looks for no return

ILIHumanity must then be maintained if wewantto beworth ournameof
human being. 39 And the maintenance of humanity is quite simply loving
people because they are human and the same as we are. 2 Quarrels and
disagreements are contrary to the meaning of man, and what Cicero said
[Off. 3.25] is true: 'A man obedient to his nature cannot harm another.’ If it is
unnatural to hurt someone, it must be in accord with nature to do good to
someone. 3 A nyone not doi ng so stri ps hi mself of the name of man, because
it is the business of humanity to rescue men in need and peril. 4 If someone
had been grabbed by a wild animal and were begging the help of a man with
weapons, should he be helped ornot? I wonder what theopinion would beof
those who think a wise man has no business to be persuaded into pity. They
are not be so brazen as to say that what humanity begs, nay, demands, must
not be done. 5 So too, if someone were to be hemmed in by fire, crushed
under a fall, drowned at sea, swept away by a flood, would they think it a
man’s business not to help? If they did think so, they wouldn't be men
themselves; no one can avoid the risk of that sort of danger. I'm sure they
will actually say that saving people in peril is exactly the business of a man,
and of a brave man too.

6 If, then, in misfortunes of that sort they admit that it is humanity’s
business to go to the rescue because there is a threat to someone's life, what
is their reason for thinking that help is not to be given if someone is hungry,
thirsty or in pain? These are conditions naturally on a par with the other

39 In this chapter L. stages an effective confrontation between pagan and Christian attitudes
to giving.

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353

chance misfortunes of life, and they need one and the same humanity; and
yet people distinguish them because they are measuring everything by
immediate advantage and not by the true measure. 7 They hope that the
people they rescue from danger will return the favour; they have no such
hope of people in need, and they think that whatever they share with them of
that sort is a waste. 8 Hence that detestable passage in Plautus [Trin. 339-
40]: 'Give a beggar food to eat, and win no favours; whatyou giveis wasted,
and it only prolongs his misery.’ 40 9 Oh, but the poet wasn't speaking in his
own person! Wasn’t he? Isn't that exactly what Cicero recommends in his
books On Duties, that largesse should not be universal? He put it thus [2.52]:
'Largesse drawn from one's own resources exhausts the well of generosity
itself. Generosity is killed by generosity. The more people you help, the less
you can help so many.’ 10 A little further on he says: 'How stupid it is to get
yourself into a position where you can no longer do whatyou were glad to
do!’ In advising people to look after their own resources with care and to put
maintenance of purse before maintenance of justice, our pretender to
wisdom is plainly restraining them from humanity. 11 As soon as he saw it
was unkind and wrong, in a fit of remorse he says in another paragraph
[2.54]: 'Largesse should be practised sometimes; this sort of generosity is
not to be absolutely rejected; a contribution from your own resources can
often be made to suitable people in need.’ 12 What does suitable mean?
Those who can repay and return the favour. If Cicero were alive today, I
would certainly cry out, 'Here you have strayed from true justice, my dear
Cicero; you wiped itoutwith oneword, themomentyou measured works of
piety and humanity by their expediency.'

13 Suitable people are not the proper object of largesse: it is as far as
possible for the unsuitable, because a deed done with justice, piety and
humanity is a deed you do without expectation of return. This is the real and
true born justice, of which you say there is no model of clear-cut shape. 41

14 You insist at many points 42 that virtue is not for hire, and you acknowledge
in your books de Legibus that generosity is for free, as follows [Leg. 1.48]:
'There is no doubt that anyone called liberal and generous is pursuing duty
and not reward.’ So why give to the suitable, except to reap a return later?

15 Anyone not suitable will thus on your authority as adviser on justice die

40 L. might have cited Sen. Beata Vita 24: 'To some I shall not give, although they are in
need, because even if I did give, they would still be in need.'

41 Cf. Off. 3.69, quoted in ch. 6.25 above.

42 E.g. Arch. 28; Mil. 35,96.

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of his nakedness, thirst or hunger, and people of means, people even
wallowing in wealth, will bring him no help in his extremity.

16 If virtueasksforno reward, if itisto besought, asyou say, foritsown
sake, then measure justice, which is mother and head of the virtues, at its
own price and not by its advantage to you; offer it most of all to someone
from whom you can expect nothing. 17 Why pick special people? Why
check for looks? If someone prays to you because he thinks you area human
being, then you must treat him as a human being too. 18 Cast off all the
shadows, the vagueoutlinesof justice, and grab hold of true justice in itsfull
form. Give to the blind, the sick, the lame and the destitute; if you don't, they
die. M en may have no use for them, but God has: he keeps them alive, gives
them breath and honours them with light. 19 Cherish them as much as you
can, and sustain their souls with humanity so that they do not die. Anyone
who can help a dying man but doesn't is his murderer.

20 There are people, however, who don't maintain their natural
humanity and don't know the reward there is in doing so; in the middle of
fearing a loss they suffer it, and they tumble into the trap they feared most,
which is that all their giving is either completely wasted or serves their
interest only very briefly. 21 The people who refuse a minimal dole to those
in need because they are reluctant to maintain humanity without loss to
themselves are actually throwing away their inheritance and getting in return
either perishable and fragile stuff or else nothing at all, at enormous loss.
22 W hat is to be said of the people who succumb to the popular taste for
trivia and spend wealth that would support great cities in giving games,
except that they must be raving mad to offer people what they themselves
lose and what none of those being offered it gains? 23 All pleasures are brief
and fading, especially thoseof eyeand ear: people either forget, and show no
gratitude for the other fellow’s spending, or even get cross if it failed to
answer popular fancy (very stupid donors in consequence have even won
themselves evil for their evil), or else, if they did find favour, all they gain is
a futile popularity and a few days' gossip. The fortunes of shallow men are
wasted in this fashion on superfluities every day.

24 Is there any more wisdom in those who offer their fellow citizens
something more useful, of greater duration? I mean the people who seek
some immortality by erecting public buildings. Even they get it wrong: they
are burying their goods in the earth twice over, because being on the record
is no use to the dead and the works don't last for ever: one earthquake
shatters them and they collapse, or they go up in an accidental fire, or some
enemy attack destroys them, or else they succumb to old age and so tumble

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down. 25 As the orator says [Cic. M arc. 11], 'There is no work of man’s
making which old age will not end and consume, whereas this justice and
mercy 43 will bloom more strongly every day.’ 26 Those who make gifts to
fellow tribesmen and clients do better: they are offering something to people
and are doing them good; but it is still not an act of true and just giving.
Giving is nothing where there is no necessity for it. 27 Anything given for
favour’s sake to people not in need is wasted, or else it comes back with
interest added, and so will not count as a gift. Even if the recipients like it, it
is still not a just gift, because if it were not made, no evil ensues. 44 2 8 The
only true and certain obligation of generosity is to feed the needy and the
useless.

Provide for outsiders and the truly needy, and do not fear poverty

IZIThis is the perfect justice which guards that human fellowship of which
the phi losophers speak, and these are the greatest and truest fruits of wealth:
not to use it for one person’s own pleasure but for the rescue of many, and
not for one's own immediate reward but for justice, which alone does not
perish. 2 It needs to be fully understood that hope of a return must be
absolutely missing from the exercise of mercy: only God may look for
reward from this particular work. If you looked for it in a man, then it will
not be humanity but the i nterest on a benefit; it is i mpossi bl e for anyone w ho
does what he does for himself and not for another to have earned any credit.
And yet there is a return: what a man does for another expecting nothing
back from it he does do for himself because he will have his reward from
God. 3 So too God requires that if we give a party at any time we invite to
share the food people who cannot invite us back on equal terms, so that
every act of our lives is charged with its duty of mercy. 45 4 But no one should
think that he is forbidden the company of friends or the love of neighbours;
God has made known to us what our true and just task is: we ought to live
with our neighbours on a basis of knowing that one thing belongs to man in
the relationship and another to God. 5 Hospitality is therefore a special virtue,
as the philosophers also say, but they divorce it from true justice and force it
under expediency. 'It is right,’ says Cicero [Off. 2.64], 'that Theophrastus

43 Cicero was appealing to the clemency of J ulius Caesar. His text says 'this justice and
mercy of yours'.

44 An extraordinary condition for justice: L. pushes to the limit Cicero's linking of utilitas
and liberalitas in de Officiis.

45 Luke 14:12.

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commends hospitality. It is very attractive, in my own view too, for the
homes of distinguished men to be open to distinguished guests.’ 6 But he
was wrong, in the same way that he was wrong when he supported 'largesse
to suitable people'. A just and Wiseman's house ought to beopen notto the
distinguished but to the poor and desperate. Distinguished and powerful
people cannot be in need of anything, since their wealth protects them as
well as distinguishing them.

7 A just man should do nothing which is not a good deed. If the good
deed is returned, however, it is over and done with; we cannot treat as clean
and whole something with a price on it that we have been paid. 8 The
purpose of justice is at work only in those good deeds which stay whole and
uncorrupted, and they stay so only if they are done to people who cannot
possibly be useful back. 9 In entertaining distinguished men Cicero looked
only to his own advantage; for all his intelligence, he failed to conceal what
he expected from it. As he says [2.64], 'Anyone doing that will be powerful
abroad because of the favour of the important people whose interest he has
secured by exercising hospitality and friendship.’

10 How many, many arguments I could make (if that were my aim) to
expose the inconsistency of the man! And it would be his own words refuting
him, notmine. After all, heitiswho says [L eg. 1.49] 'Themorea man refers
all his actions to the service of his own interests, the less he is a good man.’
11 He also says 'It is not the business of an open, honest man to go canvas¬
sing, to pretend or to drop hints, to look as if he's doing one thing while
actually doing another, to suggest he is doing something for another when
he's doing it for himself; those are the actions of someone malign, crafty,
deceitful and treacherous.’ 46 12 So how would he argue against hospitality of
that self-seeking sort being malign? I mean, would you go frequenting all
the city gates to invite the chief men of other nations and cities to your home
as they arrived, in order to gain some consequence through them with their
people? Would you expect to look just, humane and hospitable when pursuing
your own advantage? 13 Cicero acts here not incautiously - that would be
very untypical of him - but he has entangled himself in this trap wittingly
and knowingly, in ignorance of true law. 14 I n mitigation, he did say that he
was not giving advice with a view to actual justice, which he didn't possess,
but only fora hazy outline of it. 47 So let’s excuse our vague and hazy adviser,
and not demand the truth from one who admits he doesn’t know it.

46 SeeCic. Off. 3.57.

47 See note on 11.13 above.

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15 A great and notable work of justice is the ransoming of captives.
Cicero approved of it too. 'Kindness of the following sort,’ he says [Off.
2.63], 'is also of service to the state: ransoming captives from slavery,
enriching those of slender means. I put this pattern of generosity a long way
in front of lavish public shows and games; it is the mark of serious men and
great men.’ 16 So: the proper business of just men is feeding the poor and
ransoming prisoners, since the people who do this are called serious and
great by the unjust; for it is very much a matter of praise that benefactions
are made to people who were not expected to be recipients. 17 Benefactions
to a kinsman, neighbourorfriend earn no praise at all, or certainly notmuch,
because they are a duty, and not to do what nature and kinship demand of a
man would mark him impious and loathsome, whereas if they are done, it is
as much to avoid censure as to gain glory. 18 It is benefactions to theoutsider
that truly deserve praise, because such actscomeof humanity alone. J ustice thus
exists wherever there is no tie of necessity requiring a good deed. 19 Cicero
should not have even preferred this duty of kindness to giving games,
because it implies a comparison, a selection of the better of a pair of good
things, 20 and the giving of people who waste their inheritance on shows is
trivial and futile, and has nothing to do with justice at all. Gift 48 shouldn't
even be the word when the only recipients are wholly undeserving.

21A work of justice no less important is that of guarding and defending
children and widows who are destitute and in need of aid.This isa universal
prescription of divine law, si nee all good judges reckon it part of their duty to
help such people and to try to do them good, from natural humanity. 22 In
fact such works are especially ours to do, because we have received the law
and the words of God himself instructing us. Others may well feel that it is
naturally just to protect those who lack protection, but they do not see why.
23 God’s kindness is unremitting: he thus requires widows and children to
be defended and cherished, in case anyone should be held back, through
regard and pity for his own children, from accepting death in the cause of
justice and faith; he should meet it without flinching and with courage,
knowing that he is entrusting his dear ones to God, and they will never lack
for protection.

24 Looking after the sick, too, who have no one to support them, and
cherishing them is a work of the greatest humanity and a great devotion of
effort; anyone acting so will gain God a living sacrifice, and what he gives to
his neighbour for now he will receive himself from God for ever.

48 L. is working two senses of munus, gift and public entertainment.

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25 The last and greatest duty of piety is burial of strangers and paupers,
something which those experts in justice and virtue have never discussed.
They measured all duties by the advantage to them and so they could not see
it. 26 I n all the other duties mentioned above they failed to hold to the true
path, but because they grasped some element of advantage in them, they
strayed only slightly, kept in touch by a sort of sniff of the truth; but because
they could see no profit in this duty they abandoned it altogether. 27 There
have even been people who treated burial as superfluous, saying there was
no harm in lying unburied and discarded. Their impious wisdom is rejected
not only by the whole human race but also by the word of God, which
requires it. 28 They don't dare to say that it is not to be done; rather, that if it
weren’t, there is no harm done.

They are thus fulfil ling the role not so much of advisers on this issue but
of comforters, so that if a wise man missed out on burial he wouldn't think
himself wretched because of it. 29 We, however, are not discussing what is
tolerable for a wise man but what his duty is. We are not therefore asking
right now whether thewholeidea of burial isuseful ornot: even if itisfutile,
as they think, nevertheless it is to be done for this reason alone, that it
appears to peopleto beagood and humane action. What is wanted isfeeling;
what is in the balance is an idea. 30 We will not therefore permit a creature
made in God’s image to fall prey to wild beasts and birds: we will return it to
the earth whence it came; unknown to us he may be, but we will fulfil his
kinsmen’s duty; in their absence humanity will step in, and where a man is
mourned, there we shall reckon our duty is needed.

31 The whole point of justice consists precisely in our providing for
others through humanity what we provide for our own families through
affection. This kindness is much more sure and just when itisoffered notto
people, who are beyond perceiving it, but to God alone, for whom an act of
justiceisa most precious sacrifice. 32 Perhaps someone will say, 'If I do all
this, I shall finish with nothing. I mean, if some great quantity of people falIs
upon need, sickness, captivity or death, so that anyone doing all this would
be bound to be stripped of his inheritance in even a day, am I to waste the
family fortune, whether it comes of my own or my ancestors’ efforts, and then
have to live life myself on the mercy of others?' 49 33 Well? A re you so faint¬
hearted as to fear poverty? Even your philosophers approve of that, declar¬
ing there is nothing safer, nothing more peaceful! What you are scared of is

49 Cyprian in de op. et eleem. 9ff. raises this anxiety, but only to belittle it; and unlike L. in
37 below, he allows no compromise.

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the haven of all cares. 34 Or don't you know how many dangers and how
many accidents you are liable to with all this evil wealth? It will be dealing
kindly with you if it all goes without shedding your blood. Yet you stroll
around laden with booty, wearing spoils which may provoke the tempers of
your own family even. 35 Why hesitate to lay out properly something which
may be snatched from you by a simple act of robbery, a sudden proscription
or some enemy raid? Why fear to make a loose and fragile good eternal, or
to entrust your treasures to God to guard, where you need fear no thief or
robber, no decay, no tyrant? A man rich with God can never be poor. 50

36 If you think justice so important, throw away the burdens that oppress
you and follow it; free yourself of their fetters and chains, and run to God
unencumbered. Despising and trampling on mortal things is the mark of a
soul that rides high. 51 37 If, however, you cannot seize this virtue, I will free
you from anxiety so that you can bring your wealth to God’s altar and can
get yourself something surer than its fragility. All this good advice is not for
you alone: it is for the whole community that is united in mind and sticks
together as one. 38 If you cannot manage great deeds on your own, practise
justice as best you can, but do it so that your effort compared with the rest
matches your means compared w ith the rest. 39 Y ou are not to thi nk that you
are being urged to diminish your estate or to use it all up now, but rather to
switch to a better purpose what you were about to spend on rubbish. What
you buy wild animals with, free captives with; what you feed the animals
with, feed the poor with; what you buy gladiators with, bury the innocent
dead with. 40 W hat is the point of making rich men out of animal fighters
and of equipping them for crime? They are hopelessly wicked anyway. Turn
what is about to go to awful waste into a great sacrifice, so that these true
gifts may win you the eternal gift from god. 41 The reward of mercy is great:
God promisesthatfor mercy all sinsshall be remitted. 'If you heed the prayers
of your suppliant,' he says, 52 'I also will heed yours; if you pity sufferers, I
too will pity your suffering. But if you do not take heed and do not help, I too
will stir your sympathies against you and will judge you by your laws.'

G iving compensates for evil acts, thoughts and words

13L1W heneverthey beg of you, therefore, imagine that God is testing whether
he should hear you. Examine your conscience, and heal its wounds as far as

50 Cf. Mt. 6:19ff.; 12:33.

51 Cf. Cic. Off. 3.24.

52 The source of this passage is unknown.

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you can. Do not think you have licence to sin because sins are removed by
generosity: sins are wiped out if you are generous because you have sinned.
2 If you were to sin from a confidence in your generosity, then they are not
wiped out. God is very eager for man to be cleansed of his sins: hence his
requirement of penitence; being penitent is simply declaring and promising
that you will sin no more. 3 Pardon is granted therefore to those who slip
carelessly or incautiously into sin, but there is no forgiveness for those who
sin knowingly. No one should think, however, that if he has been purified
from all stain of sin he is excused the work of giving because he has no sins
to wipeout. 4 No! Thisisthemomentforan even greater practice of justice,
now that he has become a just man, so that what he did before to heal his
wounds he can now do for the praise and glory of virtue. 5 M oreover, no one
can be without a fault as long as he is burdened with his garb of flesh. He is
liable in its weakness to the triple dominion of sin in deed, word and thought.
They are the steps by which justice climbs to its topmost peak.

6 The first step of justice is to abstain from evil deeds, the second is to
abstain also from evil words, and the third isto abstain even from thought of
evil. 7 Those who climb the first step are fairly just; those who climb the
second are already peopleof perfect justice si nee they are at fault neither in
deed nor in word; those who climb the third step have clearly achieved
likeness with God. 8 It is almost beyond the capacity of man not even to admit
into one's thoughts things that would be evil to do or wrong to say. 9 Even
just men, with the power to restrain themselves from unjust acts, never¬
theless are sometimes overcome by their weakness, and they say something
evil in a moment of anger or silently long for something evil at the sight of
something desirable. 10 But if our mortal condition prevents us from being
clean of every stain, then the sins of the flesh should be wiped out by
constant giving. 11 The one need for a man who is wise, just and healthy is
to ground his wealth in justice alone: be he richer than Croesus or Crassus, if
he lacks justice, then he must be reckoned poor, naked and destitute. 53 12 We
must work to put on the garment of justice and virtue, therefore, of which no
man may strip us and which will keep us clothed forever. 13 If worshippers
of gods attend to insensible statues and load them with all the precious
things they have, which those gods cannot use and cannot be grateful to
receive, how much more just and true it is to attend to living images of God
in order to earn the living God’s favour! 14 J ust as people use what they

53 Croesus the last king of Lydia (overthrown 546 BC) and C rassus the Roman politici an (d.
53 BC) are coupled euphoniously as exemplars of enormous wealth.

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361

receiveand are grateful, so God, in whose sightyou did yourgood deed, will
approve it and will pay you full reward for your piety.

Stoics are in error in denying natural feelings

M.1 54 If then pity is a notable and excellent good in man, and if it is judged
to be so both on evidence from God and in the thinking of good and bad men
alike, then the philosophers are plainly well off course in recommending
nothing of that sort or doing anything; indeed, they have always treated as a
vice what is pretty well man’s distinctive virtue. 2 This is a good moment to
mention a particular philosophical point; then wecan makefull refutation of
the mistakes of the ones who call pity, desire and fear ailments of the spirit.

3 They are trying to distinguish virtues from vices, which is very easy to do.
Anyone could mark off generosity from prodigality as they do, or frugality
from meanness, or quiet from sloth, or caution from fear, because all these
goods have their limits, and if the limits are exceeded, they slide into being
vices; constancy not undertaken for the sake of truth turns into stubbornness.

4 Likewise, where there is no necessity forcing the issue or no good cause
for which to risk danger, bravery turns into foolhardiness. If freedom goes
on to the attack itself instead of just resisting attackers, it becomes bullying.
If firmness fails to stick to punishments that fit the criminal, it becomes mere
cruelty. 5 Hence the philosophers’ line, that people who seem bad do notsin
deliberately and do not choose evil for preference, but tumble into evil
because what looked good made them slip when they could not tell the
difference between good and bad.

6 That is not wrong, but it is all related to our physical world, it is
virtuous to be frugal, steady, cautious, quiet, brave or firm, but they are
virtues of this temporal existence. We who despise this life have other
virtues before us, of which philosophers could never have dreamt. 7 In this
way they have treated some virtues as vices and some vices as virtues. The
Stoics deny man all the feelings that stir the soul, desire, joy, fear and sorrow
(the first two come from goods either present or yet to come, the two latter
from evils). 55 8 So too, they call these four feelings ailments, as I said, not
inherent by nature so much as adopted by mistaken analysis, which is why
they think they can be eradicated from the system if this wrong analysis of
good and evil can be removed. 9 For if a wise man deems nothing good and

54 Cf. 3.23.8-10.

55 Cf. Cic. fuse. 3.24ff.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

nothing bad, hewon'tgethotwith desire, hewon'tbubblewith joy, hewon't
be atremble with fear and he won't be doubled up with illness. 10 We shall
soon see whether they can do what they want, or indeed what they can do;
meantime it is a presumptuous idea, and they must be almost insane to think
they can act as healers and work against the power and system of nature.

Stoics cannot abolish feelings by renaming them

ISulThe naturalness of these feelings is proved by the fact that all living
creatures exist on a model in which all these feelings operate anyway; they
are not somethi ng w i I led. 2 T he Peri pateti cs are thus nearer the answer: they
say none of these emotions can be removed because they co-exist with us
from birth; they try to demonstrate how providentially and how necessarily
God - or nature, as they put it - has equipped us with our emotions. But
because these feelings generally turn bad if they are excessive, they can be
healthfully controlled by man to a limited extent, so that man is left with as
much of them as nature needs. 3This is not a stupid contention, provided, as
I said, that everything is not related to this life. The Stoics are therefore mad
for seeking not moderation but removal; the feelings are there by nature, and
yet they want in some fashion to castrate people of them. That is like
wanting to take fear out of stags, poison from snakes, wrath from wild beasts
or placidity from cattle. These qualities which have been granted to dumb
animals by species have been granted to man all together. 4 But if the feeling
of joy is in the spleen, as doctors say, and wrath is in the gall bladder, lust in
the liver and fear in the heart, it is easier to kill the whole animal than to
make some partial excision. That is to want to change the animal's nature.

5 These are intelligent people, yet they do not realise that when they take
vicesoutof a man they takeout virtue as well, for which they were trying to
make space on its own. 56 If it is a virtue to restrain and repress oneself in mid
impulse to be angry, which they cannot deny, anyone deprived of anger is
also deprived of virtue. 6 If it is a virtue to limit physical desire, then anyone
without the lust he istrying to control is bound to lack virtue. If it is a virtue
to rein in a greed for acquiring someone else's property, then possession of
the virtue is impossible for someone without the emotion whose control
depends on having it. 7 W here there are no vices, there is no room for virtue
either, just as there can be no victory where there is no adversary. So it is that

56 Thus L. links his stance on human emotions to his favoured thesis on the necessary co¬
existence of virtue and vice (which is not a Peripatetic argument).

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363

good cannot exist in this life without evil. 8 Emotions are a sort of natural
exuberance of souls: fields which are naturally fertile grow a wealth of
brambles, and in the same way any untilled soul chokes itself with vices that
flourish like thorns. When the true farmer comes, however, atoncethevices
give way and the fruits of virtue spring up.

9 W hen God first made man, with marvellous foresight he bred in him
first the sort of feelings which would enable him to acquire virtue as a land
gets cultivation, and he planted the stuff of vice i n the emotions and the stuff
of virtue in the vices. Either virtue will not exist at all, or it will not be
avail able for use if its power lacks visibility, or at I east substantiation. 10 Let
us now see what is achieved by these dear people who try to excise the vices
entirely. 57 They know that the four emotions which they think develop from
contemplation of good and evil, emotions whose removal they think
necessary for restoring a wise man’s soul to health, are in man by nature, and
without them he can neither act nor react; in their place, therefore, and in
their stead they try to put something else. For desire they substitute inclina¬
tion, as if it was scarcely more significant to desire good than to wish it; so
too, for joy they substitute gladness, and for fear, apprehension. 11 In the
case of the fourth emotion they have no idea how to change the word, and so
they remove sickness - sorrow, that is, and grief of soul - entirely, which is
quite impossible. 12 No one could fail to grieve if his country were ravaged
by pestilence, ruined by enemies or wracked by a tyrant; no one can fail to
lament if he sees his freedom taken away, his friends and neighbours and all
good men either banished or killed with great cruelty - unless his mind has
been so shocked that all feeling has gone from it.

13 Either the whole lot ought to go, or else this feeble and defective
argument should have been properly completed. That is to say, something
should have been supplied in place of sickness, because to do so was a
necessary consequence of the preceding adjustments. We grieve and sorrow
at immediate evil just as we rejoice at immediate good. 14 If they found
another name for joy because they thought it was a vicious thing, so they
should have put another label on sickness, because they think it too is
vicious. It is clear from this that what they were missing was a word, and not
the emotion, and for lack of a word they were willing, quitecontrary to what
nature allows, to do away with a whole emotion which is actually very
important. 15 I could have refuted those changes of name at greater length;

57 Cf. Cic.Tusc. 4.12ff. Augustine's critique of Stoic views is along the same lines as that of
L. See civ. 14.8, with O’Daly (1999), 155-56.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

I could haveshown thata multiplicity of words for the same thing either was
due to the desire to decorate the sentiment or to increase vocabulary, or
certainly produced very little difference of meaning. Desire starts in
inclination, apprehension arises out of fear, and joy is simply gladness
expressed. 16 Let us assume, however, that they are different, as the
philosophers want. Obviously they will say that desire is a continuing and
uninterrupted inclination, that joy is a gladness raising itself to an unusual
degree, and that fear is an overgreat apprehension that exceeds the limit. So:
what they think should be removed is not removed but merely moderated,
since only the names change and the emotions themselves abide. 17 All
unawares they return to the point which the Peripatetics reach by reason:
vices cannot be removed, and so they are controlled to a moderate degree.
They are mistaken, then; they cannot achieve what they want, and back they
come to the same old path by a long, hard, roundabout route.

E motions require not extirpation but direction

l&ll do not myself think that even the Peripatetics have reached the truth:
they admit the existence of the vices but control them only up to a point;
even modest vices are something we should eschew. 2 The first thing to aim
for was no vices at all: nothing is born vicious, but vices can develop if we
exercise the affections badly, and virtues can if we exercise them well. 3 Next
it needs to be shown that it is not the affections themselves but what causes
them that needs to be controlled. 'One should not get too happy,' they say;
'just moderately and in a controlled fashion.' That is as if they were to say
one should not run in haste, but walk gently. But walkers can go astray, and
runners can keep to the right course. 4 Well? If I prove that there is a situ¬
ation in which it is a vice to rejoice for a moment, never mind moderately,
and that there is another situation when a great outburst of joy is not at all a
chargeable offence, what use will all this moderation be to us? 5 I wonder
whether they think a wiseman should rejoice if he sees some harm befall his
enemy or whether he should curb his delight if the enemy are conquered, or
a tyrant put down, and liberty and safety are restored to his fellow citizens. 6
No one doubts that it would be very bad to rejoice even a little in the first
instance, and too little in the second, and the same goes for the other
emotions. 58

58 Aristotle would have approved of this argument, even if it exposes an ambiguity in his
concept of the mean.

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365

7 As I said, however, wisdom is not concerned with control of these
feelings but in the control of what causes them, because emotions are stirred
from the outside, and putting curbs on them is particularly inappropriate,
since they are capable of being slight where there is much wrong and of
being huge where there is nothing wrong; they should have been related to
particular times, circumstances and places, in case feelings which one may
correctly exercise become vices. 8 It is good to walk straight and bad to go
astray; so too it is good to be emotionally moved in the right direction, and
bad in the wrong direction. 9 If lust does not stray outside its lawful bed, it
may be very strong but it is not culpable, whereas if it does seek another's
bed, it may be a modest lust but it is a very great vice. 10 It is not thus a
sickness to have feelings of anger or greed or lust, but it is a sickness to
exercise them. Anyone given to anger can exercise his anger on someone he
shouldn't or at an inappropriate time; anyone given to greed can even get
greedy when there is no need; anyone given to lust can even attempt what is
illegal. 11 The whole thing ought to have turned on the fact that since the
impulse to these things cannot be checked nor ought to be, because it needs
to be there to maintain our sense of duty, it should be aimed in the right
direction, so that even those who run avoid the risk of stumbling. 59

Virtues and vices need redefinition in the light of true religion

17.11 n my enthusiasm to refute the philosophers I got carried away; it was
my intention to show that what they thought were vices were not vices at all
but actually great virtues. Of these vices I shall take for purposes of
instruction the ones that I think most relevant. 2 They treat fear, or panic, as
a very great vice, and think it the supreme weakness of the mind; its opposite
is bravery, and if there is bravery in a man, there is no spaceforfear. 3 Does
anyone think it possible for fear also to be supreme bravery? No. Nature
appears not to accept that anythi ng can turn i nto its contrary. 4 A nd yet I’m
not going to use any subtle conclusions such as Socrates does in Plato,
forcing the people he is arguing with to admit what they had denied; I shall
simply show that supreme fear is a supreme virtue.

5 Everyone agrees that fear of pain, want, exile, prison or death is the
mark of a weak and timid mind; anyone not afraid of all of them is con¬
sidered very brave. But anyone who fears God is not afraid of any of them.

59 A similar argument is advanced in Aug. civ. 9.5, as acknowledged by O'Daly (1999),
119-20.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

6 There is no need of arguments to prove the point: all over the world the
punishments for those who worshipGod have always been conspicuous and
still are: torments novel and monstrous have been invented for their torture.

7 The mind shudders to think of the different sorts of death; butchery done
by wild beasts has raged beyond death itself. Yet these revolting dismem¬
berments have been endured without a groan by a happy and invincible
endurance. 8 This virtue has caused huge admiration among people in all
areas, and even among the torturers themselves, because their cruelty was
beaten by endurance. 9 And yet this virtue was born direct from fear of God.
Fear therefore, asl was saying, isnotto be rooted out, as the Stoics say, nor
controlled, as the Peripatetics say, but directed to the true path; fears are to
be removed but in such a way that this fear remains as the only one, and since
it is a true and lawful fear, all on its own it prevents fear of anything else.

10 Desire is also counted a vice. If it involves a desire for things that are
earthly, then it is a vice, whereas if its objects are celestial it is a virtue.
Anyone desirous of achieving justice, God, everlasting life, perpetual light,
and all those things which God promises to man will despise your wealth,
distinction, power and kingship. 11A Stoic will possibly say that to achieve
these things needs an inclination, not a desire. Far from it: an inclination is
too slight. Plenty of people are inclined, but when pain reaches the guts,
inclinations fade, whereas desire persists, and if it causes everything that
others desire to be matter for contempt, then it is a supreme virtue, since it is
the mother of self-control. 12 That is why we ought instead to arrange for
our feelings, which it is a vice to misuse, to be aimed in the right direction.

13 All these emotional excitements are like a chariot in harness: in
keeping itstraightthedriver’schief businessisto know the course; if he can
hold the line he won’t hit anything however energetically he goes, but if he
strays, however quietly and gently he’s going, he will either be wrecked on
a rocky bit or plunge over the edge, or at the least he’ll arrive where he has
no need to arrive. 14 The chariot of life is drawn by the emotions as if they
were vigorous horses: itwill do itsjob if it keeps a straight road. If fear and
desire are focussed on the earth, they will turn into vices; if they are related
to things divine, they will turn into virtues.

15 Thrift, on the other hand, they treat as a virtue. If it is a desire for
possession, it cannot be a virtue, since its whole concentration will be on
increasing orprotecting earthly goods. We, however, do not relate the supreme
good to the body: we measure its whole business by its preservation of the
soul alone. 16 But if, as I explained earlier, the maintenance of humanity and
justice requires no sparing of one’s inheritance, then it is not a virtue to be

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frugal: it looks like a virtue, but the label is misleading. 17 Frugality is
abstinence from pleasures, but it is a vice in that it is derived from love of
possessing; and yet, we ought to abstain from pleasures but also not be
economical with our money. Using money meanly orthriftily isa pusillani¬
mous act: either you are scared of being without, or doubtful you can make
good again, or you have no contempt for earthly things.

18 A gain, philosophers use the word prodigal for someone unsparing of
his family fortune. They distinguish between liberal and prodigal as follows:
a liberal person is one who gives largesse to those who deserve it, who gives
when it is appropriate, and who gives as much as suffices; a prodigal is one
who pours it out on those who don't deserve it, when there is no need, and
without regard to his means. 19 So: if someone bestows food on the needy
out of pity, shall we call him prodigal? And yet it makes a big difference
whether you bestow money on prostitutes out of lust or on the poor out of
humanity; whether you let panders, gamblers and pimps pi under your purse,
or you spend on piety and God; whether you pour it down your gullet and
belly, or lay it up in the treasury of justice. 20 It is a vice to spend money to
a bad end; correspondingly, it is a virtue to spend it well. If it is a virtue not
to spare resources which can be restored in order to maintain a human life
which cannot be restored, then thrift is a vice.

I have to call it madness when people deprive man, a gentle, social animal,
of his name; 21 they remove the natural affections of which all humanity is
composed and seek to reduce us to an emotionless mental stupor, while at
the same time wanting to free the mind from trouble and to make it, in their
own words, peaceful and tranquil. 22 It is not just that it cannot be done (the
emotions are the context of rational effort); it ought not to be done even,
because just as water which is stagnant is unhealthy and muddy, when the
mind is motionless and torpid it is useless even to itself: it cannot safeguard
its own existence, because it won't be doing or thinking anything - after all,
thinking is itself a mental excitement. 23 In sum, those who press for immo¬
bility of mind really want to deprive the mind of life, because life is full of
movement, and death is still.

24 T here aresomethingswhich phi losophers ri ghtl y treat as v i rtues, bu t
they do not keep them all in proportion. Constancy is a virtue, not in
resisting those who try to injure us (yielding is the right thing to do there, and
I will explain why it is in a moment), but in not being frightened away from
putting God’s commands before those of men as a result of any threat or act
of torture from people telling us to go against the law of God and against
justice. 25 It is also a virtue to despise death, but not so as to seek it out and

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bring it upon ourselves deliberately, as many philosophers, often the greatest
ones, have done, which is a wicked, criminal deed; 60 rather, we should prefer
to undergo death if we are being forced to desert God and to betray our faith;
we should defend our liberty against the foolish and lunatic violence of the
impotent, and we should challenge all the threats and terrors of this world
with spiritual courage. 26 In this way we shall trample down what others
fear, pain and death, with a lofty invincibility. That is the virtue, that is the
true constancy, to be safeguarded and preserved on this basis alone, that no
terror and no violence can possibly separate us from God. 27 Cicero's
perception is right [Off. 2.38]: 'No one can be a just man who fears death,
pain, exile or want.' 28 Seneca's view is also right; he says in his books of
moral philosophy, 'Your honest man is a man of this sort: he is not marked
out by diadem or purple, or the attentions of lictors; he does not fall short in
any way; when he sees death close at hand he is less perturbed than if he saw
some novelty; if he has torture of his whole body to endure or flame to
swallow or his hands to be stretched on a cross, he asks not what he is to
endure but how well.' 61 29 A worshipper of God endures these things with¬
out fear: therefore he is just. So it comes about that neither the virtues nor
their precise bounds can be either known or kept by any person who is
estranged from the religion of the one God.

The just man is innocentand patient; and does not retaliate

lftl Let us leave the philosophers; either they know nothing at all, and
promote exactly that as the supreme knowledge, or else they do not even
understand what they do know, or, because they think they know what they
don't know, they are futile and presumptuous in their ignorance. 2 Let us
return to our purpose; God has revealed his truth and has sent his wisdom
from heaven to us alone; so let us carry out the commands of God our
enlightener. Let us sustain the difficulties of this life and endure them by
helping each other; at the same time, if we do a good work, let us seek no
glorification from it.

3 God recommends that the doer of justice should not go boasting, in
case it may look as though he has performed his duty of humanity not from
any enthusiasm to obey the instructions of heaven but out of keenness to
please, and that he already has the prize of fame which he wanted and would

60 For L. on suicide, see 3.18.5-12. The Stoic position, to which allusion is made here, is
encapsulated in Cic. Fin. 3.60-61 (speech of Cato); cf. D.L. 7.130.

61 Sen. F96, 208 (Vottero).

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369

not accept the reward of God’s own celestial thanks. 4 Everything else that
the worshipper of God should abide by is easy if these virtues are grasped.
He must never tell lies in order to deceive or hurt. 5 It is wrong for anyone
devoted to the truth to be deceptive in anything and to depart from the
absolute truth which he pursues: on this path of justice and the virtues, there
is no room for a lie. 6 The true and just traveller will therefore not quote that
verse of Lucilius, 'It's not my way to lie to a close friend.' 62 He will reckon
it is not his business to lie even to an enemy or to a stranger, and he will never
allow histongue, the interpreter of hissoul, to diverge from hisfeelings and
his thinking. 7 If he lends money, he will accept no interest on it, on two
grounds: the kindness with which he succours someone's need will thus be
unqualified and he will take no toll of property not his. 8 In observing a duty
of this sort he must be content with his own; in any case, in order to do good,
he should even not refrain from lightening his own purse; and it is unjust to
take more than you give. Anyone doing that is laying a sort of ambush, to
gain by someone else's need.

9 The just man will never forgo the chance to act mercifully, and he will
never befoul himself with profit in such a case; he will arrange for the grant
itself to count among his good works without any restitution. 10 He is to
accept no gift from a poor man, so that anything he himself gives will be
good because it was free. He is to answer a curse with a blessing; he himself
should never curse, so that no evil word may proceed out of the mouth of one
who reveres the good word. 11 Heshouldalso take great care never to create
an enemy by fault of his own, and if there is someone so aggressive as to do
harm to a good and just man, the good and just man should put up with it in
a forgiving and self-contra I led fashion, exacting no revenge of his own but
leaving it to the judgment of God.

12 He should preserve his innocence at all times and in all places. This
advice is not just to prevent him being the cause of harm himself, but also to
prevent him seeking redress when harm is done to him. The greatest and
fairest of judges is in perpetual session, watcher and witness of all: let him
be preferred before any man to pronounce on any suit. H is verdict is beyond
evasion, whether by fine pleading or by favours. 13 And so it comes about that
a just man earns everyone’s contempt; because he will be seen as incapable
of defending himself, he will be treated as slow and useless. Anyone who
takes vengeance on his enemy, however, will be thought brave and vigorous,
and everyone will fear and honour him. 14 The good man is capable of

62 Lucil. fr. 695 (Warmington) = 8 (Charpin) = 953 (M arx).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

helping far more people; and yet they look up to the man who can hurt them
and not to the one who can help them.

The wickedness of peoplecannot deprave thejust man, however, orspoil
his enthusiasm for obeying God and preferring people’s contempt upon
condition that he is always doing the good man's duty and never the bad. 15
As Cicero says in his own work on duties [Off. 3.76], 'If a man were willing
to unpack the folds of histhinking, hewould soon teach himself that a good
man is one who would help those he could and would harm no one unless
provoked by mistreatment.' 16 What a sound and simple sentiment he has
ruined by adding a couple of words! What need was there to add 'unless
provoked by mistreatment', pinning viceon to a good man likean awful tail,
and denying his patience, which is the greatest of all the virtues? 17 A good
man would do harm if he were provoked, he said: if a good man does do
harm, he's bound to lose his name thereby. It is no less of an evil to return
harm than it is to initiate it. 18 Where do quarrels between people come
from, and how do their fights and squabbles arise, except that when
impatience encounters crooked dealing it often stirs up big storms? 19 If you
match dishonesty with patience - and there is no truer virtue than patience,
and none more worthy of man - the evil will be put out there and then, like
putting water on a fire. But if dishonesty in all its provocativeness gets
impatience as its mate, then it will flare up as if drenched in oil, and no river
at all will extinguish the blaze, but only bloodshed.

20 Patience has a huge point to it therefore, and yet the wise man has
deprived the good man of it. It is the only means whereby no evil can
happen; if it were granted to everybody, there would be no crime and no
trickery among men. 21 For a good man, nothing could be more disastrous
and more contrary to his interests than to relax the control of anger; that
would strip him not only of the name of good but also of the name of man,
since to harm another, as Cicero says so firmly, is not in accord with human
nature. 63 2 2 Even cattle fight back with hoof and horn if you provoke them,
and if you don’t pursue wild beasts and snakes to the death, they offer no
trouble; to revert to human examples, if ignorant and stupid people suffer
hurt at any time, a blind and irrational fury takes over and they try to get their
own back on their assailants.

23 So what is the difference between a wise and good man on the one
hand and evil and stupid people on the other, except that he has an invincible
patience which fools lack? He knows how to control and reduce his own

63 Cic. Off. 3.25.

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anger, while they, for lack of virtue, cannot control theirs. 24 Obviously
Cicero was deceived: when he spoke of virtue, hethoughtitwas the business
of virtue to win, whatever the point at issue, and he simply could not see that
a man could not maintain a duty of virtue if he succumbed to grief and anger
and gave in to those feelings which he ought rather to resist, rushing off
wherever a piece of dishonesty set him a challenge. 25 Anyone trying to
repay a hurt is trying to imitate the man who hurt him. Anyone imitating a
bad man thus cannot be good on any understanding. 26 In two words he
deprived a good and wiseman of two most important virtues, innocence and
patience. B ut he was a practitioner of that canine eloquence, as Sallust says
A ppi us cal led it; hence his wish for man to live I ike a dog, so that he can snap
back when provoked. 64

27 As for the damage done by retaliation, and the disasters it usually
causes, no more suitable example will be found than in the utterly dismal
fate of its recommender Cicero: in his enthusiasm to live by the advice of the
philosophers he destroyed himself. 28 If he had kept his patience when
provoked, if he had learnt that it is the business of a good man to dissemble
and to endure insults, if those fine speeches, labelled with another's name,
had never issued from his impatient mad folly, then his head would never
have bled on the rostra where once he flourished, and his proscription would
never have brought such total ruin to the republic. 65 2 9 It is not the business
of a wise and good man to look for quarrels and to put himself at risk,
because victory is not within our power and all quarrels are uncertain of
outcome; it is, however, typical of a wise and excellent man to want to be rid
not of hisadversary (which is impossiblewithoutrisk of doing wrong) butof
the quarrel itself, which can be done both usefully and justly. 30 Patience is
therefore to be treated as the supreme virtue; for a just man to attain it God
was willing for him to be despised as a sluggard, as said above. For if he is
not belaboured with insults, it will never be known what fortitude he
exercises in restraining himself. 31 But if, provoked by injury, he starts to
chase his attacker he is the loser: the man who uses reason to suppress that
reaction is plainly in command of himself; he can rule himself.

32 This control of his is rightly called patience; patience is the one virtue
opposed to all vicesand emotions. It recalls a troubled and wobbling soul to
its calm, itsoothes it, and restores man to himself. 33 Since any resistance to

64 Sal. Hist. 4.54 (Maurenbrecher).

65 The story of Cicero's proscription and death, which were M ark Antony's revenge for the
Philippics, is told in Plu. Cic. 47-49.

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nature which would reduce our reactions to nil is impossible and unprofit¬
able, emotions which might spring up damagingly (something which can
happen rather quickly) do need to be laid to rest before they cause harm. God
says that the sun should not go down upon our wrath, 66 in case a witness of
our folly may slip away. 34 Finally, Cicero (contrary to his own advice, of
which I spoke earlier) counted the forgetting of injuries among the great
credits. 'I hope,’ he said to Caesar [Lig. 35], 'that you with your habit of
forgetting nothing except injuries...’ 35 If Caesar could do that, a man utterly
remote from political and personal justice, 67 never mind the justice of
heaven, how much more should we be doing it, when we are candidates for
immortality?

The proper limits of anger, greed and lust

39tlThe Stoics try to eradicate human emotions as if they were diseases, but
the Peripatetics resist the argument, not just retaining them but even
defending them: they say there is nothing in man that is not deliberately and
providentially innate. 68 That is right, provided they knew the true ends of
every matter. 2 Anger, they say, is the whetstone of virtue, as if no one could
fight bravely against a foe without being worked up by anger. 3 That way
they make it plain that they do not know what anger is, nor why God put it in
man. If it has been given us for killing people, what could be nastier than
man? We should have to think of the very creature which God made for
community and innocence as more akin to the wild beasts. 4 There are thus
three emotions which can drive man headlong into all manner of crime:
anger, greed and lust. The poets have observed in parallel that there are three
Furies 69 which can excite people's minds: anger wants revenge, greed wants
wealth, and lust wants pleasure. 5 ButGod has fixed I i mits for them all, and
if people cross those limits and overreach themselves, they are bound to
corrupt their nature and to become diseased and vicious.

What those bounds are is no great task to explain. 6 Cupidity has been
given us for the acquiring of those things necessary for life, lust for the
propagation of children, and the emotion of anger to check the misdeeds of
those within our power: that is, for training the young by tight discipline to
be upright and just. If young people are not constrained by fear, their

66 Eph. 4:26.

67 On J ulius Caesar, see 1.15.29; 3.18.12.

68 Cic.Tusc. 4.43.

69 Cf. Cic.Tusc. 3.25.

BOOK 6: TRUE WORSHIP

373

freedom will produce insolence, and it will eruptin all manner of outrageous
and evil action. 7 It is both just and necessary to use anger against the young;
by the same token it is destructive and impious to do so against your equals,
impious because humanity is assaulted, and destructive because if they
resist, either you destroy them or you perish yourself. 8 The reason I have
given for man having the emotion of anger can be seen in the precepts of
God himself: he says we should not get angry with those who attack us,
verbally or otherwise, but we should always have the upper hand over the
young, in order to correct them with instant beatings when they sin, so that
futile affection and over-indulgence do not rear them to evil and fatten them
up for vice. 9 Inexperienced people, however, ignorant of God’s intention,
have set aside these feelings that were given to man for good ends; they are
further off course than His purpose requires. 10 Hence the injustice and
impiety of their lives.

People vent anger on their equals: hence division and banishment, and
the wars that arise against justice. They exercise greed to heap up wealth:
hence fraud, robbery, and all manner of crime. They practise lust merely to
get pleasure: hence rape and adultery, and all sorts of depravity. 11 Anyone
who brings these feelings back within their proper bounds (something which
those ignorant of God cannot do) is patient, brave and just.

Ocular pleasure - games, theatre, circus - and God's prohibition of killing

2Qllt remains for me to speak against the pleasures of the five senses, but
given the length of this book by now I must be brief. Si nee the pleasures are
all vicious and deadly, they need to be conquered and suppressed by virtue,
or, as I was saying earlier of the emotions, to be recalled to their proper
purpose. 2 The other animals know no pleasure apart from that of reproduc¬
tion. They use the senses therefore for their natural needs: they see in order
to get what they need for safeguarding life; they hear each other and pick
each other out in order to be able to meet together; anything useful as food
they find by smell or perceive by taste, and things not useful they spit out and
refuse; they measure their eating and drinking by the full ness of their bellies.
3 M an, however, thanks to the foresight of his most skilful creator has been
given pleasure which is without limit and topples over into vice, because he
has also been offered virtue, to wage perpetual war on pleasure as if it were
the enemy within. 4 Cicero in his Cato M ajor says [Sen. 40]; 'Rape, adultery
and all such outrageous acts are provoked by the temptations of pleasure,
nothing else. M an has, whetherfrom natureorfrom somegod, the remarkable

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

gift of mind; nothing is more the enemy of this divine gift and endowment
than pleasure. 5 For when lust is lord there is no room for moderation, and
virtue cannot exist under the kingship of pleasure.' On the contrary,
however: G od’s gift of vi rtue was meant to take pleasure by storm and defeat
it, keeping it inside the line when it tried to escape its given bounds, in case
itshould beguileman with its sweetness and makehim its prisoner, bringing
him under its own control and punishing him with everlasting death.

6 Ocular pleasure is complex and various; it comes from the look of
things in common use which, naturally or artificially, give delight. The
philosophers have rightly rejected this pleasure. 7 They say that it is much
better and much more worthy of a man to gaze at heaven than at objets
d'art; 70 better to marvel at that beautiful piece of work set with the light of its
stars twinkling like flowers rather than gape at stuff painted, crafted and
stuck about with jewels. 8 They urge us with eloquence to a contempt for
earthly things and to contemplation of heaven, but they have no contempt for
the great spectacle of the games. 71 9 They are delighted with them and happily
attend them too, but si nee these games offer great incitement to vice and are
very powerful in corrupting the soul, we must abolish them: they don't just
have nothing to give to the life of bliss, they actually do it great damage.

10 A nyone thinking his pieasure is served by the spectacle of someone being
put to death, however deservedly condemned, pollutes his own conscience
as much as if he were also taking part in the killing of which he is spectator.

11 And they call them games, when human blood is being shed! Humanity
has got so far away from actual people that they think it’s a game when they
are trying to kill human souls: they are more guilty themselves than ever the
people were whose murder they treat as pleasure.

12 I now put the question whether people can be pious and just if, when
their victims are under sentence of death and are begging for mercy, they
don't just let them be killed but actually press for it and add cruel inhuman
tortures on the way, dissatisfied and discontented with the bloodshed so far.
They even ask for more beatings, when the victims lie there beaten already;
they want the corpses to break up under the blows, in case anyone is trying
to trick them with a sham death. 13They also get cross with gladiators if one
of the pair isn’t killed quickly; they hate delay as if they were thirsty for
human blood. Then they demand fresh partners for the survivors, to sate

70 L. is working a pun on caelum, heaven, and caelare, to emboss, engrave.

71 Condemnation of games and other spectacles is standard among Christian apologists,
including those of African origin. SeeTert. sped.; apol. 38.4; M in. Fel. 12.5; Cypr. donat. 7ff.

BOOK 6: TRUE WORSHIP

375

their eyes as fast as possible. Imbued with a habit like that, they destroy
humanity. 14 So they fail to spare even the innocent; what they learnt in the
slaughter of criminals they practise on everyone.

15 For people trying to keep to the path of justice it is thus not appro¬
priate to be aides and participants in these public killings. When God forbids
killing, he doesn't just ban murder, which is not permitted under the law
even; he is also recommending us not to do certain things which are treated
aslawful among men. 16A just man may not be a soldier, 72 sincehiswarfare
isjusticeitself, normay heputanyoneon acapital charge: 73 whetheryou kill
a man with a sword or a speech makes no difference, since killing itself is
banned. 17 In this commandment of God no exception at all should be made:
killing a human being is always wrong because it is God's will for man to be
a sacred creature. 18 Let no one think there is even a concession which
permits the smothering of newborn babies; 74 that is the greatest of impieties,
because God puts breath into souls for life, not death, 19 whereas these
people, in case there should beany evil deed they fail to foul their hands with,
are denying a light that is not in their gift to souls still new and undeveloped.
20 Peoplewho do not spare their own blood cannot be expected to spare the
blood of others. They are, beyond argument, criminal and unjust.

21 What of those who use exposure, pressured by a mistaken piety? 75
Can people be thought innocent who offer up their own flesh and blood as
prey for dogs, and kill as best they can more cruelly than if they had
smothered the babies? 22 When space is made for the pity of others to
operate, the name for that beyond doubt is impiety. Even if the exposer’s aim
were achieved, of getting the baby reared, he has certainly condemned his
own blood to slavery or the brothel. 76 2 3 Everybody knows very well what
can and often does happen to children of either sex in error. The tale of
Oedipus alone shows that, criminally compounded twice over. It is thus as

72 See note on 4.18.

73 Condemnation of killing is total in L. Christian writers are more usually sensitive to the
risk of the innocent meeting their death in consequence of a judicial sentence. Seee.g.Aug. civ.
19.6; anon, de divitiis 6.2 (P.L. suppl. 1.1385, tr. Rees (1998), at 6.4).

74 Christians were commonly accused of infanticide (sometimes coupled with cannibal¬
ism). SeeJ ust. apol. 1.26; Euseb. H ist. Eccl. 5.1.1-4, 25-26; Orig. Cels. 6.27; Tert. apol. 8.2ff
ad nat. 1.7,23ffM in. Fel. 9.5, 28.1. H ere L. turns the charge against the pagans. For Christian
attitudes to abortion and to abandonment of children (expositio), see next note.

75 See also Just. apol. 1.27; Orig. Cels. 8.55; Tert. apol. 9.7ff.; Min. Fel. 30.1-2; with
Boswell (1988), 138-79; Evans Grubbs (1995), 325, and 338 on laws of Constantine, which do
not directly condemn abandonment of babies.

76 Cf. J ust. apol. 1.27.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

wicked to expose as to kill. 24 These parricides protest their scanty means,
of course, and claim they cannot manage the upbringing of too many
children: 77 as if means were in the power of those who have them anyway, or
as if God were not making poor out of rich and rich out of poor every day.
25 If a man is too poor to bring up his children, it would be better if he kept
away from intercourse with his wife rather than destroy works of God with
his own criminal hands. 26 If then murder is not allowed in any form, even
to be at one is completely impermissible, in case any bloodshed swamps
one’s conscience; the blood is, after all, being offered to the people. 78

27A moreviciouscorruption may occur in the theatre. 79 Comedies talk
of the rape of girls or the love affairs of prostitutes, and the more eloquent
the authors of these outrages are, the more persuasive they are with the
eleganceof their language; harmonious and well-wrought verse sticks in an
audience's memory all too easily. 28 So too the plots of tragedy put bad kings
before our eyes, busy at parricide and incest; evil deeds are paraded on high
heels. 29 As for indecent posturing of the actors, that simply teaches and
stirs up lust. Their bodies go soft and willowy, with gait and gestures that are
effeminate, and they do bogus imitations of immoral women with move¬
ments of great immodesty. 30 And what about mimes, which offer classes in
corruption, teaching adultery even as they present it, preparing the way to
the real thing by images of it? W hat are boys and girls to do when they see
these shows being put on without shame and being watched with pleasure by
all? 31 Frankly, they are being told what they can do; they are being inflamed
with lust, and lust is most excited visually; according to their sex they can see
themselves in the acts, in laughing at them they are accepting them, and they
go back home to bed all the more corrupted with the vices clinging close,
and i don't mean just boys, who ought to be kept out of vice early on, but
even old men, who ought to be beyond such misbehaviour by now.

32 W hat is the purpose of the games in the circus if not a trifling and
empty-headed silliness? 80 People's spirits are stirred to a frenzy with the
same energy as goes into the races; once they start shouting and raving and

77 At least there is a slight recognition here that poverty might be a motive for the
abandonment of children.

78 L. has been carried away; here he returns to his starting point, the corrupting influence of
ocular pleasures.

79 Another standard target of Christian apologists. See e.g. Tert. sped. 16-17; apol. 38.4;
Cypr. donat. 8; M in. Fel. 37.12; cf. Aug. civ. 2.8-13; 6.5-7, etc. O’Daly (1999), 239 finds Cic.
Rep. 4 (which survives only in fragments) a source for Christian polemicists.

80 For criticism of the circus, seej uv. 11.193ff.; Pliny, Ep. 9.6; Tert. sped. 9.5,16.Iff.; etc.

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jumping up and down, there is more of a spectacle to be had from the people
who go to watch. 33 All such spectacles are to be avoided therefore, to
prevent not just any element of vicegetting settled in hearts that ought to be
calm and peaceable, but any habit of pleasure softening us and diverting us
from God and good works. 34 Celebrations of games are festivals of gods,
sincethey were instituted in dedication of new temples or for thei r bi rthdays.
35 Saturn had animal-hunts, called shows, allotted to him from the start, as
Bacchus had stage shows, and Neptune the circus games. Little by little,
however, the same honour began to be paid to the other gods and individual
games were consecrated to them by name, as Sinnius Capita explains in his
book on shows. 81 36 Anyone therefore partaking in games being held for
religious reasons has abandoned the worship of God and has gone over to
those gods whose birthdays and festivals he has celebrated.

Aural pleasures

2LlAural pleasure comes from the sweetness of words and songs. This is
just as vicious a pleasure as that of the eyes which we have mentioned. 2 A
man who practised theatre at home would be seen as a silly wastrel, but it
makes no difference whether the extravagance is practised on your own at
home or with others in a theatre. 3 Shows have already been dealt with. We
have one thing left to conquer, in case we fall captive to something which
goes to the heart of our sensibilities. All wordless stuff, all the sweet sounds
of metal and strings, can be comfortably ignored because it doesn't stick and
can’t be written down. 4 But songs and speeches that run sweetly are en¬
trancing, and they can press people's minds to anything. Hence the reduced
faith of educated people who have come to the worship of God through the
teaching of someone comparatively uneducated. 5 Accustomed as they are
to oratory and poetry that is sweet and refined, they treat the simple,
common language of divine literature as low quality, and they despise it. 82
They want something to beguile the senses; it takes something sweet to
persuade them, something so delightful that it settles deep into the soul. 6 Is
God then, creator of mind, voice and tongue, incapableof eloquence? No: it
was His supreme foresight to make divine things plain deliberately, so that
His universal message would be universally understood.

81 Sinnius Capita was a Roman grammarian and antiquarian of the 1st cent. BC.

82 Cf. 5.1.15ff.

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7 Anyone keen on the truth, therefore, and not eager to ruin himself,
should throw away those hostile, damaging pleasures which ruin a soul the
way sweet food ruins a body. Truth must be put before falsehood, eternity
before things transitory and use before beauty. 8 There should be nothing
attractive to look at except what you see done with justice and piety, and
nothing sweet to the ear except what feeds the soul and improves you, and
this sense especially must not be twisted into a vice, for it was given us to
learn the teaching of God. 9 If it is a pleasure, then, to listen to songs and
poetry, it must be a pleasure to sing and hear the praises of God. 10 This is a
true pleasure in being a companion and ally of virtue; it is not doomed to a
short life I ike the pleasures sought by people who are slaves to the body like
animals; this pleasure is for ever, and it gives delight without cessation. 11
Anyone transgressing its limits and seeking only pleasure itself from
pleasure is busy with his death, because death is in pleasure just as life
eternal is in virtue. 12 He who prefers the temporalities will lose out on
eternity, and he who prefers the things of earth will not have those of heaven.

Pleasures of taste and smell

Z2.1As for the pleasures of taste and smell (which are entirely physical),
there is nothing for us to discuss, unless perhaps someone wants us to say
that it is a disgrace to a wise and good man to obey his belly and throat and
to walk about smeared in scent or wreathed in flowers. Anyone doing that is
simply stupid and silly, worthless: even the scent of virtue will not reach
him. 2 Someone may possibly say, 'What are they there for then, if not for
our enjoyment?’ It has been said often enough by now that no virtue could
exist unless it had something to suppress. God's purpose in H is creation was
to set up a struggle between two things. 3 Those allurements to pleasure are
theweaponsof him whose soletask itisto force out virtue and to shutjustice
off from mankind. Those are the tempting delights with which he titillates
our souls. He knows that pleasure is the craftsman of death. 4 Just as God
invites men to life only through virtue and toil, so the other one invites him
to death through delights and pleasures; just as true good is reached by way
of bogus evils, so true evil is reached by way of bogus goods. 5 All those
temptations need as much wariness as traps and nets do, in case the refine¬
ment of the pleasures i nvolved deceives us and we fal I under the domi nion of
death together with the very body to which we enslave ourselves.

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Pleasures of touch: lust is natural, but leads one astray all too easily

Z3.1 83 1 come now to the pleasure to be gotfrom touch: this is a sense which
belongs to the whole body. I don't think I need to speak of clothes and
adornment; lust alone is the topic, and lust must be ferociously repressed
because it is ferocious in its damage.

2 When God thought up the idea of two sexes, he arranged for each to
seek the other and to rejoice in the conjunction. He therefore put in the
bodies of all living creatures a burning desire, so that they would plunge into
this emotional state with great avidity and so families would be propagated
and multiplied. 84 3 This desire, or appetite, is found to be stronger and
fiercer in man, either because God wanted the number of human beings to be
greater or because only man received God's gift of virtue, so that man should
have the praise and glory for containment of his pleasures and for self-
control. 85 4 That adversary of ours therefore knows how great the strength of
the desire is (some people call it a need) and he tries to divert it from what is
right and good to what is wrong and evil. 5 He inserts unlawful longings, so
that people who could enjoy their own proper desires without sin are
corrupted by their yearning for the joys of others. 86 He puts before our gaze
provocative shapes, supplying comforts and feeding our vices. 6 Then he
stimulates in our inmost hearts all sorts of teasing feelings, working up the
natural passions we have and inflames us, until we are entangled, trapped
and betrayed. 7 He also setup brothels, so that no one need keep from others'
property for fear of punishment, and he prostituted the modesty of unfortun¬
ate women, to make mock of the men who indulge as much as of the women
who endure perforce. 8 With obscenities of this sort he has overwhelmed
souls born to sanctity in a maelstrom of mud; he has wiped out shame, and
importuned chastity.

H e even fitted male to male and contrived outrageous coitus contrary to
nature and God’s institution. Such was his pollution of men and their
preparation for every wickedness. 9 W hat can be sacred to those who take
young people in their weakness when they have no protection, and lay them

83 The Revd Dr Fletcher, whose translation was first published in 1850, said in a footnote at
this point, 'It has been judged advisable to give this chapter in the original Latin.’

84 That sex is for procreation only is emphasised in the Christian andj udaic traditions. See
e.g. Ciem. Strom. 2.18.88.4, 2.7.58.2 etc.; Just. apol. 1.29; Jos. ap. 2.199, 2.202. The Stoic
M usonius Rufus held the same view. See Lutz (1947), 86.

85 Again, lust is present, in part, to give virtue work to do.

86 Cf. M inucius Felix’s fierce attack on prostitution and homosexuality (and on other sexual
irregularities) at 28.10-11.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

out for the ravages of their own corrupting lust? 10 No tale of this can be told
that fully matches its wickedness. I can only call such people parricides, and
impious, when they have to supplement the sex God gave them with
treacherous, lecherous same-sex profanities. Yet they treat it as something
trifling, as virtually respectable.

11W hat can I say of those who practise an abominable lust - or rather,
an abominable madness? It is revolting to mention it, but are we to think it
will be so to people who are not revolted to practise it? It has to be men¬
tioned, nevertheless, because it happens. I speak of people whose loathsome
lust, whose detestable frenzy does not even spare life. 12 What words can I
use to attack so great a wickedness as this? W hat must my indignation be?
The evil is so great that it overwhelms my duty to speak. Since it is lust
which causes such deeds and lust which plans such crimes, we must arm
ourselves against it with the greatest virtue. 13 Anyone unable to restrain
such feelings should restrict them to the measure of his lawful bed, so that he
not only achieves what he wants so greedily but also keeps out of sin. 14 What
do these wretches want, anyway? Pleasure is a natural consequence of good
deeds; if they seek pleasure on its own, then the pleasure they can enjoy is a
just and legitimate one, 15 but if it is a pleasure prevented by some necessary
bar, then virtue must be applied very firmly, so that self-control can win the
struggle against greed. It is not just other men's beds and other things
impermissible but the bodies of public prostitutes from which God also
requires abstention: he tel Is us that when two bodies are joined together they
make one body. 87 16 He who dips himself in mud is bound to come up
smeared in mud. A body can be washed clean quickly, but a mind corrupted
by contact with an unclean body can only be cleansed from the filth that
clings to it over a long period of time and after many good works.

17 Everyone should therefore conclude that union of the two sexes was
provided for living creatures for the sake of procreation, and that this is a law
laid down for our emotions to ensure our continuity. 18 ButjustasGod gave
us eyes not to gaze and grab at pleasure but to see for the sake of those
actions relevant to the needs of life, so too we have been given the genital
part of the body, as the word itself indicates, merely for the creation of
offspring. 19 This law of God needs an obedience of the utmost dedication.
All those expecting to profess themselves God’s disciples should be so
organised morally that they can exercise command over themselves.
20 People who indulge in pleasure and follow the whim of their lust enslave

87 Cf. I Cor. 6:16.

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their soul to their body and condemn it to death, because they have
surrendered to the body, where death holds sway. 21 Every individual should
therefore, as far as he can, model himself on modesty, cultivate a sense of
shame and guard his purity in mind and conscience; one who follows the I aw
of God should not just obey the public laws, but be superior to all such laws.
22 If he conforms himself to these goods, he will soon be ashamed to
degenerate to something less good. Lethimjustbecontentwith whatisright
and honest, which is of more joy to good people than depravity and
dishonesty are to the bad.

23 I have not yet completed all the duties of chastity. Its bounds are set
by God to be not the walls of one’s own dwelling but actually the edge of
one's own bed, so that anyone with a wife should not want to have a further
woman, slave or free, but should be true to his marriage. 88 2 4 I n public law
the rule is that adultery applies only to the woman who has another man; the
man is acquitted on a charge of adultery even if he has several women. 89
25 Not so in God’s law. God’s law joins two people together in matrimony
(into one body, that is) on equal terms: whichever one extends the physical
bond elsewhere is treated as an adulterer. 26 This explains why God
deliberately made all other female creatures reject their partners after giving
birth, but made woman alone of them all continue with her husband; other¬
wise (presumably), if husbands were rejected, lust would drive them to look
elsewhere, and if that happened, they would not sustain any claim to
chastity. 27 But the virtue of chastity would be equally impossible for a
woman, if she were unable to sin: who calls a dumb beast chaste just for
rejecting the male after parturition? The animal does it because if she admits
the male, she will necessarily come to pain and peril. 28 There is no praise
for failing to do what you could not do anyway. Chastity is praised in a
human being, however, because it is not natural but deliberate. 29 Each
partner must therefore be true to the other; indeed, a wife must be taught her
chastity by the example of his self-control. It is unfair to make a demand of
what you could not produce yourself. This unfairness has certainly caused
adulteries, when women take it badly that they are being faithful to partners
who do not show a love to match.

30There is, finally, no adulterous woman of such a desperate shameless¬
ness that she won't excuse her vices by saying she does no injustice by her

88 This general attack on all extra-marital relationships includes concubinage, which was
common and socially acceptable. See Evans Grubbs (1995), 309-16; Arjava (1996), 205-17.

89 On the double standard, which persisted under Constantine and other Christian emperors,
seeArjava (1996), 202-05.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

sin, but is merely retaliating. This has been very well put by Quintilian: 'A
man,’ he says, 'not abstaining from another’s marriage, nor protective of his
own.' 90 The two things are naturally connected. 31A husband who concen¬
trates on seducing other men’s wives cannot make space for the sanctity of
the home, and when a wife is caught in a marriage of that sort, she is
encouraged by his example to think either of copying him or of getting her
revenge. 32 We must take care therefore as husbands not to let lack of self-
control on our part give occasion for vices of theirs: married couples should
adjust themselves to a joint morality and accept the union in a spirit of
equality; we must imagine ourselves in the other. In fact the sum of justice
virtually consists in not doing to the other what you yourself would not want
the other to do to you. 91

33 T hese are the i nstructions G od gives for development of self-control.
Nevertheless, in case anyone should think that he can frame divine precepts
himself, there are others (so that all false claims and opportunities for
deception can be removed): anyone who marries a woman divorced by her
husband is an adulterer; 92 so is anyone who divorces his own wife (except on
a charge of adultery) to marry another. God did not intend the united body to
be divided and split into two. 34 Further, not only is adultery to be shunned,
but so is even thought of it: 93 no one is to look upon someone else's wife and
lust for her mentally; the mind becomes an adulterer if it even paints itself a
picture of its pleasure. 35 It is certainly the mind which sins; all the evil and
all the misconduct lies in the mind which embraces in its thinking the fruits
of uncontrolled lust. 36 Even if the body were spotless, if the mind is impure
the meaning of chastity fails, and where greed sullies conscience, chastity
plainly cannot be whole.

37 No one should think, however, that it is difficult to put the brakes on
pleasure and when it roams to shut it in within the bounds of chastity and
modesty, since man’s appointed task is to conquer it, and very many have
maintained a blessed and uncorrupted integrity of body, and there are many
who enjoy this celestial style of life in utter bliss. 38 God does not give his
commands for this as if he were creating restrictions (children do need to be
born), but as if he were making space for it. He knows what pressure he has
put on these feelings of ours. 'If any man can do this,’ he says, 'he will have

90 [Quint.] Decl. (Ritter, pref. Ill, n. 17).

91 Cf. Mt. 7:12.

92 Cf. Mt. 5:32; 19:9.

93 Cf. Mt. 5:28.

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383

an extraordinary reward, a reward beyond compare.' 94 3 9 This sort of self-
control is the pinnacle and consummation of all the virtues. If a man can
strain and struggle through to it, our lord will acknowledge him as his servant,
and our master will acknowledge him as his disciple: he who achieves the
virtue of God will triumph over the earth, and he will be like unto God.
40 These things may seem difficult, but we speak of the man who has a path
to heaven being prepared for him when he tramples down all earthly things.
Because virtue lies in recognition of God, everything is difficult when you
are in ignorance, while all is easy when you know. If we aim, as we do, at the
supreme good, we must get to it through difficulty itself.

Penitence wins G od's forgiveness

24.1No one should give up, however, or despair of himself if he slips on to
the path of injustice when overcome by greed, driven by lust, tricked by a
mistake or compelled by force. He can be restored to freedom if he repents
of his acts and satisfies God by turning to better things. 95 2 Cicero thought
this impossible; in his third Academic his words are: 'If it were possible for
those who went astray upon their journey to repent and to correct their
mistake after following the wrong path, then amendment of their careless¬
ness would be easier.' 96 3 Plainly it is possible. If we see our children sorry
for their faults and we think they are right again, and if we then pick them up
and cuddle and embrace them in their sorrow and submission, why should
wedespairof our true father's clemency being open to our penitence? 4 He
who is our most indulgent lord and parent promises forgiveness of sins for
thosewho repent: Hewill wipeout all the iniquities of anyone who starts to
practise justice again. 5 The uprightness of his previous life is no good to one
living badly now, because the new wickedness overrides his old acts of
justice; likewise old sins are no impediment to one who has been put
straight, because his new justice has wiped out the stain of his earlier life.

94 The passage L. appears to be quoting is not known.

95 There had been an important debate over penitence in the African church arising from the
Decian persecution (249-50). See Cypr. de lapsis; ep. 55; with Clarke (1986), vol. 3 ad loc. L.
would have applauded ep. 55.16.1, where Cyprian confronts the Stoic disapproval of pity with
the Christian idea of divine clemency. L. does not here specifically evoke the theme of how to
deal with Christians who abandon the faith or who have compromised themselves in time of
persecution. The issue was shortly to rise to the surface again, and to tear apart the African
church, in the Donatist schism.

96 Cic. Ac. fr. 24.12 (Plasberg).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

6 Anyone repenting his misdeeds understands his former error; the Greeks
call this G metanoia, which is better and more meaningful than we can
manage in Latin by calling it resipiscence. Resipiscence, or recovery of
mind from a sort of madness, marks the person irked at his mistake: he
chastises himself for his idiocy and encourages his soul to live a better life;
in particular he also develops a wariness of tumbling into the same trap
again. 7 M oreover, when dumb animals are tricked and caught, they too, if
they can extricate themselves somehow and escape, become more wary
thereafter, and they always avoid anything in which they feel some
treacherous trap has been laid.

8 Penitence thus makes people cautious and careful about avoiding any
sins into which they once tumbled when deceived. 9 No one can be so far¬
sighted and so watchful as not to slip at some time. That is why God in His
knowledge of our frailty revealed to man, out of his compassion, the haven
of salvation, so that the healing power of penitence could rescue us in the
need to which our frailty is subject. Let anyone who has gone astray retrace
his steps and recover and reorder himself as soon as he can. 10 'To recall
one’s steps, to escape to the upper air: that is the task and that is the toil.' 97
When people have tasted of pleasures misleadingly pleasant, they can
scarcely be prised away; they would follow the right more easily if they had
never experienced those sweets. If they could but spring themselves out of
such evil servitude: every mistake will be forgiven if they correct their
mistakes by living better.

11 No one should think he profits if he has no witness of his fault:
everything is known to him in whose sight we live, and even if we can fool
all men wecannotfool God, from whom nothing can behid and nothing can
be secret. 12 Seneca ended his Exhortations with a splendid sentence. 'There
is some great divine power, greater than can be imagined, and we give our
best efforts to living for him. Let us make ourselves acceptable to him. It is
no use to keep one's conscience closed: we are open to god.' 98 13 Even a
man who did know God could not have said anything truer that, andthatwas
said by a man ignorant of true religion. He has expressed the majesty of God
by saying it is greater than the capacity of the human imagination can grasp,
and he has also reached the source of truth itself in his perception that human
life is not something superfluous, as the Epicureans propose, butthatif people
live justly and piously they are living for God as best they can. 14 Seneca

97 Verg. A. 6.128-29.

98 Sen. F89, 202 (Vottero).

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385

could have been a true worshipper of God if anyone had shown him how, and
he would surely have despised Zeno and his own master Sotio had he found
the guide to true wisdom." 15 'Let us make ourselves acceptable to him,’ he
said: that is a simply celestial remark, if only the admission of his ignorance
did not precede it. 'It is of no use to keep one's conscience closed: we are
open to god.’ No room, then, for lying, no room for dissembling: the eyes of
man arefrustrated by walls, but the divinity of God cannot be frustrated even
by stomach walls from seeing and knowing a man all through.

16 I n book 1 of the same work Seneca also says,' W hat are you up to?
What are you trying to do? Why are you hiding? Your guardian is close
behind you. Emigration losesyou one friend, death another, and poor health
loses you a third; yet one whom you can never lose abides. 17 W hy pick a
secret place and remove all witnesses? Suppose you have had the luck, you
idiot, to escape everyone's eyes: what’s the use of no witness when you still
have a conscience?’ 100 18 Cicero speaks in no less remarkable a way of
conscience and God. 'Let him remember,' he says [Off. 3.44], 'that he has
God for witness; that is to say, in my opinion, he has his mind, and God has
given man nothing that is more godlike.' 19 So too, when he was speaking of
the just and good man, he said [3.77], 'Such a man, therefore, will never
venture to think, to say nothing of doing, anything that he would not dare
proclaim openly.’

20 So let us purify our consciences, which are wide open to God’s eyes,
and, as Cicero says [Ver. 2.28], 'Let us always live in such fashion that we
think we have an account to render,' and let us reckon that at every moment
we are being looked down upon not by men [Ver. 5.35] 'in some theatre of
the world,’ but by him who will be our judge and also our witness, and when
he asks for the account of our life we shall not be allowed to deny what we
have done. 21 It is therefore better either to flee from our awareness or else
to open our souls of our own deliberate accord and drain off any poison by
re-opening our wounds. No one else has the power to heal them but he alone
who restored the lame to walking and the blind to sight, cleansed polluted
limbs and resurrected the dead. 101 22 He will slake the fires of our desire,
root out lust, take away envy, and soften wrath; he will restore a true and

99 Cf. 1.5.26 and note. This Zeno is presumably the founder of the philosophy that Seneca
followed, Stoicism. See 1.5.10; 3.4.Iff.; 3.6.7 ('Zeno the leader of the Stoics'). Sotio, a
Pythagorean, taught Seneca in the early years of Tiberius' reign (14-37); under his influence
Seneca became a vegetarian, for a time. See Sen. Ep. 49.2; 108.17-21.

100 Sen. F81,196 (Vottero).

101 Cf. Mt. 11:5.

386

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

lasting health. 23 This healing is one for all to seek, because the soul is beset
by greater peril than the body is, and care is needed for its lurking diseases as
an absolute priority. 24 Even if someone had clear sight in his eyes, all his
limbs in good order, the health of his whole physique utterly sound, I still
would not call him healthy if he were carried away by anger, swollen with
pride, the slave of his lusts and hot with desires, 25 whereas a man who did
not set his gaze on another man’s prosperity, did not prize wealth, looked at
another man's wife with respect, went after nothing at all, wanted nothing of
anyoneelse's, envied none, despised none, was humble, merciful, generous,
gentle and humane, with peace perpetual reigning in his soul: that is the
healthy man, that is the just man, and that is the perfect man.

26 The true worshipper of God is therefore anyone who obeys all these
commandments of heaven: his sacrifices are gentleness of soul, a life of
innocence, and good deeds. 27 He who displays all these does sacrifice
every time he does any good and pious deed. God has no desire for a victim
made of dumb animal or death and blood, but one made of man and of a
man’s life. 28 For this sacrifice there is no need of sacred branches or
expiatory offerings or altars of turf; they are utterly pointless. Only what
comes from the inmost heart is needed. 29 The greatest altar is truly that of
God; placed as it is in the heart of man it cannot be defiled by blood; on it are
laid justice, patience, faith, innocence, chastity and abstinence. This is the
truest ritual, and this is 'that law of God,’ as Cicero put it, 'famous and god-
given, which always requires what is right and honest and always forbids
what is depraved and filthy.' 102 A man who obeys that most sure and holy
law is bound to live in justice and lawfulness. 30 I have set forth only a few
chapters of it because I promised I would say only those things which
completed the topping out of virtue and justice. 31 Anyone who wants to
grasp the rest that could be said should seek it at the very fountainhead from
which this stream has flowed to us. 103

God requires as sacrifice purity of soul and devout worship

25blLetusnow say a few words about sacrifice. 'Ivory,' says Plato [Lg. 956a],
'is not a chaste offering to a god.’ Well? Are paintings and cloth precious
then? There is no chaste offering to be made to God out of anything that can

102 Cic. fr. 107,22 (Garbarino); cf. Leg. 1.18; 2.8.

103 L. here acknowledges that for all his parading of poets, philosophers and oracular
literature, he can turn if need be to the ultimate written authority, the Bible.

BOOK 6: TRUE WORSHIP

387

be spoilt or stolen. 2 But if Plato could see that nothing should be offered to
a living being made of dead matter, why did he not see that no corporeal
offering should be made to the incorporeal? 3 Seneca put it much better, and
more truly: 'Do you peoplewantto think of god asgreat, peaceful, reverend
in an easy majesty, as a friend and always close by, not someone to worship
with sacrificial beasts and quantities of blood - what pleasure is there in the
slaughter of the undeserving? - but with a pure heart and a good and honest
determination? He needs no temples built with stone piled high; each man
must keep him sacred in his heart.’ 104 4 Anyone thinking that God values
clothes and jewels and the other stuff treated as precious clearly does not
know what God is; he thinks God finds pleasure in things that a mere man
would rightly be praised for disdaining.

5 There is no chaste offering and none worthy of God except what he has
required in his famous holy commandment. There are two things which are
due as offeri ngs, gifts and sacrifices: a gift is for ever and a sacrifice is for the
while. 6 For those people who have no notion of the nature of divinity, a gift
is anything made of gold and silver or anything woven of purple and silk,
and a sacrifice is a victim and anything burnt upon an altar. 7 But God has
use for neither, because he himself is uncorrupt and all that stuff is
corruptible. God must therefore be offered the pair of incorruptibles: that
pair he can use. integrity of soul is the gift, and praise and hymns are the
sacrifice. Since God is not visible, he must be worshipped with things
invisible. The only true religion is the one founded on virtue and justice.

8 How God puts man’s justice to use is easy to understand. If a man is
just, he will receive immortality and will serve God forever. 9 M an’s destiny
of justice is an idea scouted not only by ancient philosophers but also by
Cicero. Indiscussing the laws he says [Leg. 1.28]: 'Of all theideasthat are
regularly debated by learned men nothing surely is more noteworthy than
the clear understanding that we are born to be just.’ We ought therefore to
show and present to God only the sort of behaviour for whose achievement
he created us.

10The absolute soundness of this double sort of sacrifice is well attested
by HermesTrismegistus, who agrees with us (with the prophets whom we
follow, that is) in fact as in word. He speaks of justice as follows: 'Adore this
word, my son, and worship it. There is only one worship of god, not to be
evil.’ 105 11 So too in that perfect address of his, when he heard Asclepius

104 Sen. F88 202 (Vottero).

105 NF Corp. Herm. 12.23.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

asking his son whether he agreed to incense and other fragrances being
offered to his father by way of sacrifice to god, he cried out, 'Speak words of
good omen, Asclepius, of good omen. It is the very greatest impiety to have
any such thing in one's mind concerning the one and only good. These
things and their like are not agreeable to him. He is replete with all that
exists, and of all that exists he has minimal need. Let us give thanks and
adore him. The only sacrifice for him is a benediction.’ 106 And quite right
too. 12 God should be made sacrifice by word, since the word is God, 107 as
he himself has declared.

The supreme rite in worshipping God is praise directed to God from the
mouth of a just man; for it to be acceptable to God itself, however, there is
need of the greatest humility, awe and devotion, in case one should incur a
charge of pride and arrogance when behaving in the confidence of one's
integrity and innocence, thereby losing the grace of virtue. 13 In order to be
precious to God and free from all stain, a man should beg continually for
God’s mercy and should pray only for forgiveness of his sins, even if they be
none. 14 If he wants for anything further, it needs no saying to him who
knows our wishes: if he has good fortune, he should give thanks, and if bad,
he should render satisfaction, and admit that it happened so because of his
sins. And yet he should also give thanks in misfortune, and should render
satisfaction for good fortune, so that he may be the same at all times, steady,
unchangeable and unshaken. Norshould he think that such action isonly for
the temple; he should act so at home too, and even in his own bed. 15 Let
him finally keep God always holy in his heart, si nee he himself is a temple of
God. 16 If he serves God his father and lord with this constancy, obedience
and devotion, that is the consummation and perfection of justice, and he who
maintains such justice is, as we declared above, obedient to God and has
satisfied the claims both of religion and of his own duty. 108

106 NF Corp. Herm. Asclep. 41.

107 Jn 1:1.

108 T hroughout this book L. has been in di alogue with Cicero deOfficiis. It is fitting that he
should end with an evocation of that work and a tacit assertion of the main source of its
deficiencies, its neglect of religion.

BOOK7:THE LIFE OF BLISS

On the nature and destiny of the world and man

LI'Good: the foundations are laid,' in the words of the great orator [Cic.
M ur. 14], We have not only laid foundations, however, to be strong and fit for
the work ahead; we have also advanced the whole building, of great and
sturdy mass, nearly to its top. 2 W hat remains, to roof it or to decorate it, is
very easy by comparison; without it, however, our previous labour is waste
and goes unrewarded. 3 What use is it, either to be liberated from bogus
religions or to understand the true one? W hat use is it, either to see through
the emptiness of bogus wisdom or to get to grips with the true wisdom?
W hat use is it, I repeat, to defend the justice of heaven and to sustain one's
worship of God despite great difficulties - that is the supreme virtue - unless
it is followed up by God’s reward of perpetual bliss?

4 That is our subject for discussion in this book; otherwise, all our
previous work will look vain and fruitless, as it would if we left unclear the
reason for the work being undertaken. No one must think that a task so great
is being done to no effect; he will misdoubt the heavenly reward for it which
God has established for all who despise these sweets of earth in favour of
virtue pure and simple. 5 We must provide the satisfaction now due, using
not only evidence from holy scripture but also arguments plausible in them¬
selves, so that it is equally clear that future is more important than present,
heavenly than earthly and eternal than transient: the rewards of vice are
temporal, and the rewards of virtue eternal.

6 I shall therefore set forth the explanation of theworld, so that the time
of its making by God and God's reason for making it can be easily under¬
stood, something which Plato, who discussed the making of the world, 1
could neither know nor explain. He did not know the mystery of heaven,
which cannot be learnt without the instruction of the prophets and of God;
that is why he said it had been made in perpetuity, 2 which is well off the
truth: anything of dimensions and weight which had a beginning at some

1 L. probably had before him Cic. Ac. 2.118, behind which lies Plato'sTimaeus.

2 Later Platonists contested whether Plato believed this or agreed with Aristotle. For a
critique of Plato, see Cic. N.D. 1.20.

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point must also have an end. 7 Aristotle could not see how such a huge thing
as the world could perish; in his desire to escape this requirement, he said the
world had always existed and always would. 3 8 He was quite blind, because
every existing thing must have had a beginning at some point, and nothing
can be i n existence without having started existence. Since wecan see earth,
water and fire, which are simply ingredients of the world, disintegrating,
being consumed and put out, so we understand that a whole whose parts are
mortal is mortal itself. 4 Anything capable of perishing has thus had a birth. 9
Everything that becomes visible to the eyes must also be, as Plato says, 5 both
corporeal and destructible. 10 Only Epicurus, therefore, upon the authority
of Democritus, has told the truth of this: he said it arose at a certain point in
time and would perish at a certain point in time. 6 He could give no reason,
however, why this great work should be undone or when. 11 Since God has
revealed it to us, and si nee we grasp it not by guesswork but by gift of heaven,
we will explain itwith care, so that those eager for the truth may seeclearly
at last that the philosophers neither saw nor understood the truth, but had
scented iton the wind - though they wholly failed to realise where that scent
of wisdom came wafting from in all its delicious sweetness.

12 M eantimel think it necessary to warn my readers that our tradition of
knowledge will either not be understood at all by minds depraved and vicious,
whose sharpness is blunted by their earthly desires, which dull and enfeeble
all theirsenses, or if itis, they will pretend not to understand and will refuse
its truth, because they are drawn by vice into a conscious preference of their
own evil; they are trapped by the sweetness of it and abandon the way of
truth, put off by its bitterness. 13 Because they are aflame with avarice and
an insatiable thirst for wealth, because they cannot sell what they love or
bestow itaround and livea lifeof straitened means, of course they prefer to
disbelieve the reality of what compels them to forsake their desires. 14
Hence too the claim of people spurred on by the pricks of lust till they
'plunge into madness and fire,' as the poet says: 7 they say that what we offer
them is quite incredible, because our recommendations for self-control hurt
their ears and bar them from the pleasures to which they have surrendered
themselves body and soul. 15 Whether swollen by ambition or inflamed by

3 Cf. Cic. Ac. 2.119.Aristotle’sdeCaelo, where this doctrine is expounded, was unavail able
to Cicero (or to L.).

4 Cf. Philo, aet. mundi 124-29.

5 SeePhd. 80c.

6 Epic. fr. 304 (Usener); cf. 2.10.24 above.

7 Verg. G. 3.244.

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391

love of power, they have devoted their efforts to acquisition of honours: not
even if we held the sun itself in our hands would they fit their faith to a
teaching which bids them despise all power and honour and live humbly, so
humbly indeed that they could accept injury and would refuse to retaliate
even if they did suffer. 16 These are people who shut their eyes and yap
against the truth in any fashion, whereas people who mean to be healthy -
people, that is, not so deeply into vice that they cannot be restored to health
- will believe it and will gladly accept it; what we say will seem to them to
be open, plain and simple, and also (which is the big need) true and
incontrovertible. 17 No one favours virtue who lacks the capacity to pursue
it, and the pursuit is not easy for all: it is possible for those well acquainted
with poverty and need, experiences which make them capable of virtue. 18
If virtue is toleration of evil, then people for ever in good circumstances do
not acquire it: they have never experienced evil and they are too used to good
to endure it; good is what they desire because it is all they know. 8

19 Hence the fact that belief in God is easier for the poor and lowly, who
travel light, than for the rich, who are cumbered with too much baggage.
Indeed, they are chained and fettered by it, and bow to the nod of my lady
Greed, who has snared them in bonds inextricable, and they cannot gaze at
heaven because their minds are face to the earth and fixed to the ground.
20 The road of virtue has no room for people with great loads: it is a very
narrow path by which justice guides man to heaven, and its course can only
bekeptby a man stripped and unencumbered. 21Thoserich people, laden as
they are with a host of vast boxes and bundles, are treading the path of death,
which is a very wide path because ruin keeps wide empire upon it. 22 God’s
recommendations to them on justice, and our own treatment under God’s
guidance of virtue and truth, are bitter, and poisonous. If they are going to
risk a repudiation of them, then they necessarily admit themselves to be
enemies of virtue and of justice.

23 I will now come to what remains, so that this work may come to its
end, and it remains to discuss the judgment of God. This judgment will take
place when our lord returns to earth to pay each individual his reward or his
punishment according to his merit. 24 We spoke of his first coming in Book
4; 9 in this book we shall relate his second coming, which the Jews also
acknowledge and expect, but in vain, since he is bound to return merely to

8 L ,'s favourite idea of the mutual dependence of virtue and vice, with virtue attainable only
through the overcoming of evil, resurfaces here. See, in more detail, 5.27a-q below.

9 See4.12.22.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

console them, not to summon them, as he first came to do. 25 They treated
him in his humility with gross impiety: they will behold him a conqueror in
power. When God weighs them in the balance they will suffer all those things
they read and do not understand: stained with all their sins and soaked too
with his holy blood, they are doomed to everlasting punishment by the very
one on whom they laid theirwicked hands. 26The material in which weshall
convict thejews of their criminal error we shall, however, keep separate.

The end of evil and the age of bliss beyond the comprehension of
philosophers

ZINow to teach the people who do not know the truth. It was ordained by
will of God most high that when due space of time had passed, this unjust
generation should be ended, and as soon as all wickedness had been wiped
out and the souls of the pious recalled to the life of bliss, an age of
tranquillity, peace and quiet should bloom under the kingship of God: as the
poets call it, a golden age.

2 The cause of all the philosophers' mistakes was principally the fact that
they did not grasp the explanation of the world; and the whole of wisdom
lies in that explanation. 3 Indeed, it cannot be grasped by any private sense
or inner understanding; yet they wanted to achieve that understanding by
themselves, without a teacher. So they fell into a variety of opinions which
were often at odds with each other, and they could find no way out; they all
stuck i n the same mud, as the comic poet says, 10 because natural ly the explan-
ation did not match their assumptions, which were sound enough, but could
not be confirmed or proved without knowledge of the truth and of things
celestial. That knowledge cannot exist in a man, as I have said many times
now, unless it has been understood through the teaching of God. 4 For if a
man could understand God’s work, he could also do it: to understand a thing
is to follow in its footprint. Butman cannot do what God does because man
has a mortal body; hence he cannot even understand what God does, and the
possibility of any such understanding is easy for anyone to estimate, from
the immensity of God’s activity in creation. 5 If you would just gaze at the
world, together with everything in it, you would surely understand how much
G od’s achievement exceeds man's. The difference between G od's works and
man’s works is the same as the distance between God's and man’s wisdom.
6 Because God is uncorrupt and immortal, and therefore perfect, and

10 Ter. Ph. 780. See 2.8.24.

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because he is everlasting, so his wisdom is as perfect as he is, and nothing
can obstruct it because God himself issubjectto nothing. 7 M an, however, is
subject to passion: so his wisdom is subject to error, and since many things
prevent a human life from being everlasting, so human wisdom is neces¬
sarily prevented by many things from a perfect perception of the truth in its
fullness.

8 There is therefore no human wisdom if it must make its own efforts in
the direction of know I edge and the understanding of truth, si nee the mind of
a man is bound in with hisfrail body, enclosed in a dwelling of darkness, and
it cannot roam free or see the truth with clarity: knowledge of the truth is a
mark of divine status. God’s achievements are known to God alone. 9 M an
cannot attain that know I edge either by thinking or by discussion, but only by
learning and listening to him who alone has power to know and teach. 10
That is why Cicero [Tusc. 1.99] borrowed Plato’s report of what Socrates
said: a time had come for him to leave this life, while those before whom he
pleaded his case would live on; 'Which is better,’ he said, 'is known to the
immortal gods. I think that no man knows it.' 11 11 All philosophical sects are
therefore bound to be remote from the truth because it was men who
established them; in having no support from any oracular pronouncements
of God they can have no foundation or solidity.

God made the world, God governs it, and God will bring it to an end

3.1The Stoics (we are speaking of philosophers' errors) divide nature into
two parts, one creative and the other to be available for creation. 12 They say
the capacity for thought lies in the first part and matter in the second, and
neither has any power without the other. 2 How can there be identity of the
worker and his work? If anyone said that the potter was the same thing as the
clay or vice versa, he would surely be plainly mad. 3 Yet in the one word
'nature' they include two completely differentthings, God and theworld, the
craftsman and his work, and they say that the one has no power without the
other, as if God were naturally mixed in with the world. From time to time
they get things so confused that God is himself the mind of the world and the
world is God’s body, as if God and the world could have begun to exist
together and God had not actually made the world. 4 That is something they
admit elsewhere, however, when they declare that the world was constructed

11 See Plato, Ap. 42a: Socrates' last words to his judges. L. is close to Cicero.

12 D.L. 7.134 (= LS 44B; alsoC-E).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

for the sake of mankind, 13 and God could exist without the world if he
wished, since God is divine and everlasting mind, released from body and
free. 5 Hence that sentence of Vergil's [A. 6.726-27], 'Infused throughout its
limbs, mind drives the whole mass, and permeates the great body.’ 6 So
where does that leave their statement that it was made by divine providence
and isalso governed so? If hemadetheworld, then he existed withoutit; and
if he rules it, then he does so not simply the way mind rules body but as a
master rules his house, a helmsman his ship and a charioteer his chariot, all
without being part of what they rule. 7 If all these things that we can see are
I i m bs of G od, then because the I i mbs I ack sense G od too must be i nsensi bl e,
and because the limbs are mortal as we see them to be, he also must be
mortal.

8 I could list many occasions when lands have been shaken by sudden
movements, and have cracked open or col lapsed into a hole, when towns and
islands have been drowned by waves and disappeared into the deep, when
waters have inundated good agricultural land, and rivers and lakes have
dried up, and mountains have shattered and tumbled down or been levelled
with the plains; many regions, including the foundations of many moun¬
tains, 14 are eaten away by fire lurking inside. 9 Waste of his limbs on God’s
part is irrelevant, were it notthat man has some licence to damage them. We
build out into the sea, we hack down mountains, we dig up the entrails of
earth to extract the riches; 15 even ploughing can't be done without scarring
the divine body, and thus we are wicked and impious creatures, because we
do hurt to God’s limbs. 10 So does God permit his body to be tormented, and
does he bring about his own enfeeblement, or at least let man weaken him?
Or did that divine capacity of his to feel, which is mixed in with the world in
every part, abandon earth's top layer and plunge to the lowest strata in order
to avoid all feeling of pain from the constant torment?

11 If that is absurd nonsense, which it is, then the Stoics have been as
short of sense as it is: they have failed to perceive that the divine spirit is
diffused in all directions, and everything is contained within it, butnotto the
extentthatGod himself, who is incorruptible, can bemixed in with elements
that have body and are corruptible. 12 What they took from Plato is sounder,
that the world was made by God and is governed by his providence. Plato
and people of like mind ought then to give us the reason, or the plan, that

13 Cf. de ira 13.9. See Cic. N.D. 2.133; Porph. Abst. 3.20.1 (both citing Stoic authorities).

14 Cf. Sal. Cat. 20.1.

15 Cf. Ovid, Met. 1.138ff.

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there was for creating such a work: why did he do it, and for whose sake?
13 Our friends the Stoics say, 'Theworld wasmadeforthesakeof men.'Yes.
Who made those men, however, and why, is beyond Epicurus’ knowledge.
W hen Lucretius said that the world was not constructed by the gods, he put
it thus [5.156-57]: 'To say, further, that man was the cause of their wish to
provide the world in all its glory is,’ he then added [165-67], 'stupid. What
advantage could thanks of ours bestow on immortals in their bliss that they
should setoutto do anything foroursake?' Rightly said. 14TheStoicscould
offer no reason for the human race being created or established by God. It is
our duty to explain the mystery of theworld and of man; they knew nothing
of that, and could neither reach nor see the shrine of truth.

15 Though they had assumed, as I said a little earlier, what was in fact the
truth, namely that the world was made by God and that it was made because
of man, they could not defend it because the reasoning failed them in their
subsequent discussion. 16 To avoid treating God’s work as feeble and liable
to ruin, Plato said it would abide for ever. Now if it was made for men, and
was so made that itwould lastforever, why are the beings for whose sakeit
was made not eternal themselves? W hereas if the beings it was made for are
mortal, then it too is mortal and perishable: it is not worth more than the
people for whose sake it was made. 17 If he could think it through, he would
understand that itwould perish because it was made; only the intangible can
abide for ever.

18 Anyone denying that it was made for man speaks irrationally. If he
says that the creator put all these great works in motion for his own sake,
then why were we born? W hy do we enjoy the world? W hat is the meaning
of the creation of the human race and of all other living things? Why do we
usurp the advantages of others? Why do we grow, decline and die? 19 What
is the point of procreation, and of the preservation of species? Presumably
God wanted to go on seeing and making his little likenesses, as it were, in
their own various images for his pleasure; and yet, if that were so, he would
be treating living things as important, and especially man, in having put
everything under man’s control.

20 As for those who say that the world has always existed (I ignore the
fact that it cannot exist without some beginning, and they cannot get out of
that problem), I say this: if the world has always existed, then it can have no
reason. 21 in something which had never had a start, what could reason
construct? Before things get made or built, you need a plan, so that the
method of construction can be sorted out, and nothing can be started without
reasoned preparation. 22 Before every creation comes its reason: what never

396

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

got made has therefore no reason. And yet the world does have its reason,
because the world is a construct and is under control. Therefore it was made.
And if it was made, it will also be unmade. 23 So let them produce an
explanation, if they can, either of why it was made in the beginning or of
why it will be unmade in due course.

That was beyond the power of Epicurus (or Democritus) to explain; that
is why he said it was born of its own accord, of seeds meeting each other at
random, and that when the seeds broke apart again, its disintegration and death
would follow. 16 24 Epicurus misinterpreted what he had been right to see,
and in his ignorance of the plan he destroyed it entirely, reducing the world
and everything in it to the likeness of some meaningless dream, since human
activity would make no sense. 25 But the world and all its elements run to a
wonderful system, as we see; order in the heavens, the measured progress of
the stars and lights of heaven within their variations, the regular and remark¬
able differentiation of the seasons, the diverse fruitfulness of the land, the
level plains, the ramparts and ridges of mountains, the greenness and rich¬
ness of forests, the vital emergence of springs, the seasonal overflow of rivers,
the rich and abundant intervention of the seas, the winds in their different
useful quarters, and everything else, are all constructed to a supreme plan: so
who can be so blind as to think that something which simply radiates the
wondrous provisions of a providential plan was produced without a cause?
26 If nothing exists and nothing at all can be made without a cause, if the
foresight of God most high is manifest in the disposition of things, his virtue
in their greatness and his power in their control, then those who said there is
no providence are obtuse, and mad. I would not disapprove if they denied the
existence of gods in order to speak of one god, but when they do it to speak
of no god at all, anyone thinking they are not mad is off the rails himself.

God made the world for man and gave him reason

4.1We spoke of providence adequately in book One; if it exists, as is plain
from the remarkable nature of its effects, then it is inevitable that the same
providence created man and the other living creatures. 2 Let us then see what
the reason was for creating the human race, since the point the Stoics make
isagreed, that the world was made for the sake of men, though theStoicsgo
wrong someway in saying for the sake of men, not man: use of the singular
embraces the whole human race. 3They go wrong because they do not know

16 See Epic. fr. 382 (Usener).

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that God did first form one man alone; they think men developed like
mushrooms in fields all over the world, butHermes was well aware that man
was made both by God and in God’s image. 17

I return to my purpose, however. 4 There is, I think, nothing that can be
made for its own sake: anything that is made at all must be made for some
end. No onewould be so stupid or so futileasto attempt, unsuccessfully, to
make something for which he expected no use and no profit. 5 A builder
doesn't build just for a house to exist, but so that he can live in it; a ship¬
builder doesn't start on his task just to have a ship appear but so that sailing
in ithappens; 6 so too, anyone who throws a pot doesn't do itjustto prove he
did it but so that when it is made it can contain something he wants, it is the
same with all the other things that get made: they are not made to be super¬
fluous but for some useful purpose.

7Theworld was therefore made by God not just for the sake of theworld
itself: since it lacks the capacity to feel, it does not need the heat of the sun,
the light of the moon, the blowing of the winds, the moisture of the clouds or
the sustenance of crops. 8 Equally it cannot be said thatGod made theworld
for his own sake, because he can exist without the world, as he did before it,
and none of the things that are in theworld and are bred in it are used by God
himself.

9 it is therefore clear that the world was made for the sake of living
things, since living things enjoy what the world is made of: all the things
necessary forthem to live and maintain existence are supplied in dueseason.
1011 i s also cl ear that the other living thi ngs were created for the sake of man
from the fact that they serve man, and they have been given to him for his
protection and his use, since, whether they are creatures of land or sea, they
do not understand the plan of the world as man does.

II At this point a reply is owed to the philosophers, and most of all to
Cicero, who wonders [Ac. 2.120] 'why god, in making everything for our
sake, gave such power to water-snakes and vipers, and why he spread so
many sources of plague over land and sea’. 12 The room for debate is enor¬
mous, but we are skimming and must keep it brief. Si nee man has been shaped
out of two different elements opposed to each other, soul and body - heaven
and earth, that is - tenuous and graspable, eternal and temporary, responsive
and unresponsive, enlightened and dark, the plan itself necessarily required
that he should be offered both good and evil, good to use and evil to avoid
and shun.

17 NF Corp. Herm. 1.12.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

13 M an was given wisdom in order that he should learn the nature of
good and evil and exercise the power of his reason both in seeking good and
in avoiding evil. The other animals were not given wisdom, but received a
natural protective clothing of armour instead; man’sspecial giftfrom God to
match all that was reason alone. 14 God made man naked and weaponless in
order to protect him with a cloak of wisdom; man's armour for self-defence
was put within, not without: not over his body but in his heart. If there were
no evil for him to beware and to distinguish from things good and useful, his
wisdom would not be needed. 15 Cicero should realise that either man was
given reason in order to catch fish for his sustenance and in order to avoid
water-snakes and vipersfor hissurvival, orelsehewas challenged with good
and evil because he had wisdom, and all the power of wisdom is occupied in
distinguishing good and evil.

16 The strength, reason and capacity of man is therefore great, right and
wonderful: God madetheworld itself and everything there is for man’s sake
and did him the great honour of putting him in charge of it all because only
man could show wonder at God’s achievement. 17 M y friend Asclepiades, 18
who discusses the providence of God most high in the book which he wrote
and sent me, puts it well: 'One may reckon,’ he says,' that divine providence
was right to grant position next itself to a creature which would understand
its arrangements. 18 There is the sun: who sees it in such a way as to
understand that it is the sun, and what influence it has on everything else?
There is the sky: who looks up at it? Here is the earth: who works it? Here is
the sea: who sails it? Here is fire: who uses it?' 19 Nothing has been setup by
God on his own account because God needs nothing; God set everything up
for man because man could use it all fittingly.

M an is immortal but made for immortality, which is the reward for
nourishing soul rather than body

5ulLet us now give the reason for God’s creation of man himself. If the
philosophers had known it, they would either have defended the truth they
found or not have fallen into such huge error. 2 This is the main point, the
pivotal point, and anyone who fails to grasp it loses all hold on truth; this is,
indeed, what caused God’s purpose to make no sense to them. If they had
seen its light, if they had known the whole mystery of man, theAcademy
would never have throttled the philosophers' debate and thwarted all

18 SeeJ erome uir. ill. 80. L. addressed two books to Asclepiades.

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philosophy. 3 As God did not make the world for his own sake, not needing
its goods, but for the sake of man, and man it is who uses it, so he made man
for hi sown sake. 4 'What use was man to god,’ says Epicurus, 'that god made
him for his own sake?' 19 For there to be someone who understood God’s
achievement, of course, someone who could admire intellectually and pro¬
claim verbally God’s foresight in planning him, his thought in making him
and his virtue in completing him; and the sum of it all is that man should
worship God. 5 Worship follows on understanding: measure the virtue of his
greatness by what it takes you to plan, to start and to finish your own works,
and then you will observe the creator of the universe, your own true father,
with the adoration he deserves.

6 No clearer argument for God having made the world for man’s sake
and man for his own sake can be presented than that man alone of all living
things is so shaped that his eyes are directed at heaven, his face gazes at God,
and his countenance is shared with his creator, and that God has clearly
stirred man to contemplation of him by lifting him from the ground with
outstretched hand. 7 'So what,' says Epicurus, 'does the worship of man
confer on god in his bliss and utter self-sufficiency? Or if he had so much
respect for man that he built the world for him, equipped him with wisdom,
made him lord of living things and loved him like a son, why did he make
him frail and mortal? Why expose his beloved to all evil, when man ought as
god’s close companion to be in bliss, everlasting even as god is, for whose
worship and contemplation hewasformed?' 20 8Wehaveexplained thishere
and there in earlier books, but because there is now specific demand for it,
our theme being discussion of the life of bliss, we must sort out Epicurus’
points with more care and clarity, so that God’s plan, and his work and
purpose, can be known.

9 God had the power to create countless souls from his own immortal
spirits, just as he created the angels, who have their immortality quite free of
peril orfear of evil. Nevertheless, he planned something beyond all telling,
the creation of an infinite host of souls; he would set them up initially with
bodies of frail and feeble constitution midway between good and bad, and
nature would put virtue before them in their ambivalence, in case they
should cometo immortality softly and comfortably; they were to achieve the
inexpressible reward of eternal life with the greatest difficulty and huge
effort. 10 in order therefore to burden the souls with clumsy and troublesome

19 Epic. fr. 371 (Usener); cf. Lucr. 5.165-67.

20 Epic. fr. 371 (Usener); not apparently in Lucretius.

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limbs, he decided first, since they could not exist in the middle of a void
when theirown bodyweight was pressing them downwards, that they should
have some placeof residence established. 11 Hetherefore began, of hisown
ineffable virtue and power, the wonderful work of the world. He hoisted
light elements on high and heavy ones he set down low, fixing the heavens
and establishing the earth. 12 There is no need to follow out the creation in
detail since we did it in its entirety in book 2. 21 He put lights in the sky,
whose pattern, brightness and motions are excellently adapted to use by
living beings, and to the earth, which he meant to be their home, he gave
fertility for bearing and producing all manner of things, so that a wealth of
fruit, grain and greenstuff could supply nourishment to match the nature and
practice of every species.

13 W hen he had set up everything appropriate to the state of the world,
he made man out of earth itself, the earth which he had prepared for him as
his dwelling place from the start: that is, he endued and wrapped his own
spirit in an earthly body, so that in its own combination of diverse and contra¬
dictory materials it could take up both good and evil. 14 The earth is fertile
for the production of its fruits; so too the body of man, being drawn from
earth, has taken up a power to create and a capacity to bring forth offspring,
so that despite its inability to last for ever (shaped as it is from degradable
material), it could yield place when its own span of life was up, and renew in
a perpetual succession the frailty and weakness of its own creation.

15 So why did he make man mortal and frail when he had made the
world because of him? His first purpose was to have an infinite force of souls
produced to fill the earth with its multitude; his second was to face man with
virtue: that is, endurance of evil and toil as the path to the prize of immor¬
tality. 16 M an is made of two stuffs, body and soul; one is earthly and the
other is heavenly: so man has been granted two lives, one temporal and
assigned to the body, and the other eternal, related to the soul. 17 We take on
the one by being born; the other we achieve by toil, to prevent, as we said
earlier, man coming to immortality without any toil and trouble. The one life
is earthly, like the body, and so is finite, but the other is celestial, like the
soul, and so has no limit. Wereceiveourfirstlifein ignorance, oursecond in
knowledge, it is the reward of virtue, not of nature, because God wanted us
to win life for ourselves in life. 18 He has given us this present life so that
either we lose the real and everlasting life by our vices or we earn it by our
virtue. The supreme good does not exist in this temporal life because, being

21 2.9ff.

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granted us by divine necessity, it is likewise undone by divine necessity:
because this I ife has an end, so it does not possess the supreme good. 19The
supreme good isto befound, however, in thespiritual lifeto come, which we
win for ourselves by ourselves, because it cannot contain either evil or end.

Proof of this comes from the nature and purpose of the body. 20 All the
other animals bend towards the earth because they are of earth and without
immortality, which isof heaven, whileman iserectand contemplates the sky
because he has immortality before him (though it does not come to him
unless granted by God; otherwise there would be no difference between just
and unjust, since every man born would become immortal). Immortality is
not therefore a natural consequence but the reward and prize of virtue. 21
Finally, man does not walk upright from the moment of birth: first he goes
on all fours, because the pattern of body and this present life is shared by us
with the dumb beasts; our body becomes upright when its strength is
developed, and its tongue is released into speech and it ceases to be a dumb
animal. 22 This shows that man is born mortal, but then becomes immortal
at the point when he starts to live of God, that is, to follow justice, which is
entailed in worship of God, when God stirs man to gaze at heaven and
himself. That happens when man is cleansed in the heavenly basin, 22 laying
aside his infancy together with every stain of his life hitherto; with the
increment of God’s strength, he then becomes a man full and perfect. 23

23 Virtue is the challenge that God puts before man. Body and soul may
go together, but they are opposites, and they quarrel, turn and turn about. The
goods of the soul are the evils of the body: avoidance of wealth, that is, the
baron pleasures, and contempt of pain and death. Likewise, the goods of the
body are the evils of the soul: greed and lust, that is, which encourage pursuit
of wealth and the attractions of pleasures of all sorts, which unmuscle the
soul and kill it. 24 it is necessary for the just and wise man to live amid all
evils because the conqueror of evils is courage, whereas the unjust man must
live amidst wealth, esteem and power: these are corporeal and earthly goods,
and the unjust live their earthly life incapable of aiming at immortality
because they have succumbed to pleasures which are the enemy of the soul.
This temporal life is thus bound to be subject to the eternal one to come, just
as body is subject to soul.

25 A nyone therefore who prefers the life of the soul must despise the I ife
of the body; such a man will not be able to aim for the highest unless he has

22 i.e., baptised.

23 Cf. I Cor. 13:11; Eph. 4:13.

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despised the lowest. Anyone who embraces the life of the body and aims his
desires at the earth cannotachievethesuperiorlife. 26 Hewho prefers to live
well for eternity will live poorly for a time, suffering all manner of trouble
and hardship as long as he lives on earth in order to have God’s heavenly
comfort, and hewho prefers to livewell for now will live poorly forever; for
putting earthly goods before heavenly, he will receive God’s sentence of
eternal punishment. 27 God’s wish to be worshipped and honoured as father
by man is deliberate: man shall have thereby virtue and wisdom; wisdom
alone creates immortality. There is no one apart from God who can give it;
he is its only possessor. M an’s piety, his means of honouring God, has the
reward from God that man shall be in bliss for ever, being in God's house
and with God always.

While soul and body cohere, so must good and evil

27a 24 1 No one should now seek refuge in the argument that God is at fault
for setting up good and evil. W hy did he want evil if he hates it? Why did he
not just make good, so that no one should sin and no one do evil? Though I
have explained this in almost every previous book, and touched on it in the
last book albeit lightly, nevertheless a word of warning is due now because
the whole idea of virtue depends upon it. 27b Virtue could not exist if God
had not made opposites, and the effect of good simply cannot be seen except
by comparison with evil; that is the extent to which evil is simply the
illumination of good. Take away evil, and good must go too. 27c If you cut
off your left hand or foot, your body will not be whole, and life itself will not
stay steady; that is the extent to which left is very properly combined with
right, to balance your physical frame. 27d So too, if you make chessmen all
the same, no one will play; if you fix on one colour at the circus, no one will
think it worth going: all the pleasure of the games will be removed. The
emperor who first instituted the games backed one particular colour, of
course, but he created the other to be its rival, so that there would be com¬
petition, and some partisan element in the show. 27e So when God fixed
good and presented virtue, he also fixed their opposites so that they could
come into conflict. If there were no fight and no enemy, there is no victory.

24 The problem of evil is, as L. allows, a recurrent theme of this work. There now follows
L.’s fullest discussion of it, and his distinctive resolution of it. Augustine went off in a different
direction in developing his doctrine of grace. Because this passage occurs only in M SS S and g
(R does not survive here) and because of its alleged dualistic content, it was regarded by Brandt
as a later addition and was relegated to a footnote. See pp. 27-28 n. 106.

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Remove competition, and even virtue is nothing. How many competitions
men go in for with each other, and how cleverly constituted they are! Yet no
one would be judged braver or faster or better if he had no adversary to
compete with. Where there is no victory, there has to be no glory and no
prize for victory either. 27f Hence God’s provision of both together, so that
he could strengthen virtue by constant practice and bring it to perfection
through its conflict with evil: the one cannot maintain its effectiveness
without the other. Hence a system of opposites: the whole idea of virtue
relies upon it.

27g I am well aware what objection clever people can makeat this point.
If good cannot exist without evil, how can you say that the first man existed
in a context of good alone before offending God and how will he do so
again? This is a problem we must sort out, since I passed it by in earlier
books in order to give it its due here. 27h We said earlier that human nature
is composed of contradictory elements. The body, derived of earth, is tan¬
gible, time-bound, brutish and unenlightened, whereas the soul, derived
from heaven, is intangible, eternal, sensitive and bright. 27i Because these
elements are opposites of each other, man is inevitably subject to good and
evil: good is attached to soul because soul is imperishable, and evil is attached
to body because body is perishable. So, since body and soul are thus allied
and conjoint, good and evil must also cohere and cannot be separated from
each other except when body and soul split up. 27j Finally, knowledge of
good and evil were given to the first man together. Once he had that know¬
ledge, he was immediately banished from the holy place, where evil does not
exist. He had been there in a context of good alone; he therefore did not
know that it was good. Once he had taken on the understanding of good and
evil, however, it was wrong for him to remain in a place of bliss, and he was
banished to this world we all share so that he could experience together the
two things he had learnt together.

27k It is thus plain that man was given wisdom in order to distinguish
good from evil, benefit from disbenefit, and useful from useless, in order to
exercise judgment and consideration of what he should beware and what he
should seek, what to shun and what to pursue. Wisdom cannot therefore be
established without evil; that first member of the human race lived in a
context of good alone for as long as he did live in it like a child, knowing
neither good nor evil.

271 In the end, it may be said, man has to be both wise and blessed
without any evil at all, and that cannot happen as long as his soul is housed
in the flesh. Evil will be separated from good, however, when thedivorceof

404

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

body and soul has been made, and just as the body dies and the soul remains,
so evil will perish and good survive. Then man will take on the garment of
immortality and he will be wise, and free of evil, as God is.

27m Anyone, therefore, who wishes us to exist in a context of good alone
is simply wanting us to live without our bodies where the evil is. But if body
were removed, then man will either lose wisdom (as I said) or body: if
wisdom, he will not recognise evil; if body, he will not feel it. As it is, man
being equipped with wisdom in order to know and with body in order to feel,
G od’s purpose was for each to exist on equal terms in this I ife so that his plan
for virtue and wisdom could take place. 27n He put man midway between
the two so that he should have licence to pursue evil or good, but with the
evil he mixed in some apparently good things, an assortment of attractive
delights, that is, to draw man on by the temptations in them to the latent evil,
and with the good he mixed in some apparent evils, pain, misery and toil,
that is, whose harshness and unpleasantness might depress the spirit into
shrinking from latent good. 27o This is where the use of wisdom comes in:
we need to see more with our minds than with our bodies, something very
few can do, because virtue is hard and rare while pleasure is something many
share. 27pThewise man must therefore be treated asafool: whilehe seeks
out goods that are not visible, he dismisses out of hand those that are, and
while he avoids evils that are not visible, he tumbles into evils right under his
nose. That is our experience too: we refuse neither torture nor death for our
faith when we are being compelled towards the supremely wicked act of
betraying that faith, denying the true God and making libation to gods which
are dead and deadly. 27q That is the reason why God constructed the world
for man’s sake, and yet made him mortal and also subject to evil: obviously,
it was so that man could go for virtue and his virtue could give him
immortality. A nd virtue, as we have shown, is worship of the true God.

Worship of gods is pointless

&lLet us now stamp a brief definition on the whole argument. The world
was made in order for us to be born; we get born in order to acknowledge its
maker and our God; we acknowledge him to worship him; we worship him
to receive immortality as the reward of our labours (worship of God requires
huge labours); we are granted the prize of immortality to become like the
angels, to serve our father and lord most high for ever and to be God’s eternal
kingdom. 2 That is the sum of it all: that is God’s secret and the mystery of
the world, and those who chase after present pleasure are quite outside it,

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devoting themselves to earthly and fragile goods and plunging their souls,
which were born for things celestial, into the mud and muck of joys that are
lethal.

3 Let us see instead whether there is any sense in worship of gods. If they
are numerous, and if they are only worshipped by men so that men can
bestow on them wealth, victories, honours, and other things of only present
validity; if we are born without cause, if there is no providence in the pro¬
creation of human beings, if we are born to ourselves by chance and for our
own gratification; if after death we are nothing: then what can be so super¬
fluous, so insignificant, so empty as humanity and the world itself, when it
has such incredible greatness and such a wonderful construction and yet is
open to such silly nonsense? 4 Why should clouds move at the breath of
winds? W hy should lightning flash, thunder roar, and rain fall? W hy should
earth produce its fruits and feed its various offspring? Why indeed should all
nature toil to ensure no dearth of what keeps man alive if man is futile and
we die for nothing, if there is nothing in us of greater profit to God? 5 But if
it is wrong to say that, and it is not to be thought possible that something which
you can see has been constructed to an excellent plan was nevertheless not
constituted to any plan, what reason can exist in these religions of confusion
and corruption, and in this belief of philosophers that makes them think
souls die? Absolutely none at all. 6 What reason can they give for gods
demonstrating all these things so carefully to men in due season? Is itso that
wecan givethem barley and wine, and the smell of incense and the blood of
cattle? Immortalscan takeno pleasureinthatbecauseitisall perishable, and
itisof no use to beings without bodies because it is all fortheuseof beings
with bodies; and anyway, if that was what they wanted, they could supply
themselves whenever they wished. 7 Whether souls die or last for ever, what
is the sense in worship of gods? A Iternatively, who made the world? W hy
were men created, or when, or how long for? For what end and purpose?
W hy do they get born, die, succeed each other and get renewed? What do the
gods get from the worship of beings who are going to be nothing after death?
What offers and promises do the gods make, and what threats that are
worthy of men or gods? 8 Or if souls survive after death, what do the gods
do, or what are they going to do, with them? W hat is their need for a stock-
pi le of souls? Where do they spring from themselves? How, why and whence
are they so numerous? 9 If you stray from the summary of the situation just
given above, the result is that all reason disappears, and everything collapses
into nothing.

406

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Philosophers have pieces of the truth at best

7.1 Because philosophers have not grasped this summary, so they have not
been able to find the truth either, even though they have more or less seen and
accounted for what makes up the summary. Various of them have presented
it all in various ways, without linking together the causes, consequences and
systems of things so as to give that all-embracing summary its proper frame
and content. 2 It is easy to show that truth has been divided almost in its
entirety by philosophers and sects. Wedon'tgo undermining philosophy the
way theAcademics usually do, required as they are to respond to everything
(though what they really do is to nitpick and quibble); we point out that no
sect has been so astray and no philosopher so witless as not to see something
of the truth, 3 but the Academics, in their mad determination to contradict, in
their defence of their own views even when wrong and in their attack upon
the views of others even when right, have not just lost hold of the truth which
they claimed to be seeking; they have lost it altogether, by their own fault. 4 If
there were anyone at all who could have collected together and restored to its
parent body the scatter of truth dispersed among individuals and sects, he
would certainly not disagree with us. But no one can do that without an
expert knowledge of the truth, and knowledge of the truth requires a man to
be taught by God. 5 There is no other way of rejecting what is false and
picking out and proving what is true; but if that did happen, even by chance,
it would be a philosopher's act, and though the fellow could not defend the
truth with evidence from God, even so, the truth would shine out with its
own light itself.

6 Their confusion is unbelievable. They back a particular sect and give it
their allegiance, and then condemn the others as false and empty; they equip
themselves for war without knowing what they ought to defend or what they
ought to refute, and they sail into the attack all over the place, with no
discrimination, against everything proposed by anyone who disagrees with
them. 7 This determined quarrelsomeness of theirs has led to there being no
philosophy which gets any nearer the truth: their own grasp of the truth is
entirely piecemeal.

8 Creation of the world by God was asserted by Plato; the prophets say
the same, and so it appears from the verses of the Sibyl. It is an error there¬
fore to say that everything was born of its own accord or from minute seeds
getting clotted together, since something so extensive, so detailed and so
great could not be created orarranged and ordered without some very intelli¬
gent creator, and the very system by which everything is perceived to hold

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together and to be under control argues a creator of the shrewdest under¬
standing. 9 The Stoics say that the world and everything in it was made for
the sake of men; holy scripture tells us the same. Democritus was therefore
wrong to think that people oozed out of the earth like worms, with no creator
and no pattern. 10 The reason for man’s creation belongs to the divine
mystery; Democritus could not know that, and so he reduced human life to
nothing. 11A risto 25 taught that men were born to seek virtue; we are told so
and taught so by the prophets. Aristippus 26 is therefore deceived in making
man subject to pleasure - to evil, that is - like an animal. 12 Pherecydes 27
and Plato argued that souls are immortal; in our faith, that is established
doctrine. Dicaearchus 28 was therefore as wrong as Democritus in arguing
that the soul perishes and breaks up with the body. 13 The existence of a
world below was the teaching of the Stoic Zeno, with different abodes in it
for the pious and the impious, the pious dwelling in areas of peace and
delight and the impious paying their penalties in areas of darkness and
ghastly pools of mud; the prophets put the same picture to us. Epicurus was
therefore wrong in thinking it a figment of the poets and in interpreting the
well-rehearsed punishments of the world below as events of this life. 29

14 The whole truth, therefore, and the full mystery of God’s religion
were things with which the philosophers made contact, but because the
reason for them did not accord with the views of any of them individually
they could not defend their discoveries against the objections of others. They
could not fit the truths that they had perceived into the sum, as wedid above.

The supreme God and immortality are connected inextricably

&lThe one supreme good is therefore immortality: we were formed in the
beginning to acquire it and we were born so too. That is what we aim at, that
is what human nature gazes at, that is what virtue brings us to, and because
we have our hands on this good thing, all that remains is to speak of immor¬
tality itself. 2 Plato’s arguments have a considerable contribution to make,
but they have too little reliability to establish the truth and fill it out: the
sense of the wholegreat mystery missed its consummation in him; he failed

25 Aristo of Chios (fl. early 3rd cent. BC) was an unorthodox pupil of Zeno of Citium.

26 For Aristippus, see 3.7.7.

27 Pherecydes of Syros (fl. mid 6th cent. BC), an early prosewriter in Greek (possibly the
earliest), wrote on the origin of the gods and the universe.

28 For Dicaearchus, see 3.17.34.

29 Epic. fr. 341 (Usener).

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

to bring it together; he had not understood the supreme good. He may have
come to a sound conclusion about the immortality of the soul, but hedid not
discuss it in the way he discussed the supreme good. 30 3 We are therefore in
a position to identify the truth with greater confidence; we can do so without
uncertainty and surmise because we have come to know it by gift of God.

4 Plato argued as follows: 31 whatever perceives of itself and always
moves of itself is immortal; what has no initial motion will have no end of
motion because it cannot abandon itself. This argument would grant eternity
to dumb animals as well, if he had not made the distinction by tacking on
wisdom. 5 To avoid the link he added: 32 it is impossible for the human spirit
not to be immortal; man’s extraordinary powers of invention, his speed of
thought, his ready ability to understand and learn, his recollection of the past
and his anticipation of the future, his knowledge of countless skills and other
things, a knowledge which other animals lack, is plainly divine and heavenly,

6 because a soul which grasps so much and retains so much can have no
origin on earth since it has no admixture of anything earthy in it. Inevitably
the solid elements in man, which break up, return to earth, but the light
elements, which are very fine, are indivisible, and when released from the
prison of abode in the body fly off in pursuit of heaven and their own nature.

7 That is an abbreviation of Plato’s thinking; in Plato himself it is set out at
length. Pythagoras before Plato was also of the same opinion, and so was
Pythagoras' teacher Pherecydes, of whom Cicero reports 33 that he was the
first to debate eternity of lifefor souls. 8AII these people may have excelled
in eloquence, but in this clash, so to put it, there was just as much authority
in the expression of the contrary views, by Dicaearchus first, then by Demo¬
critus and finally by Epicurus, enough indeed to call into doubt the very
i ssue at the heart of thei r quarrel.

9 Finally Cicero: he set out the ideas of all these peopleon immortality
and death and then declared that he did not know which was true.' W hich of
these opinions is true,’ he says [Tusc. 1.23], 'some god may see.’ Again
elsewhere: 'Since each of these two views,' he says, 'has persuaded experts
of considerable authority, and their soundness cannot be divined...' 34 10 We,

30 This is a surprise, since Plato does discuss the immortality of the soul in Phaedo. What
he does not do is to connect summum bonum with immortality.

31 Phdr. 245c; cf. Cic.Tusc. 1.53.

32 Cic. Tusc. 1.66, citing his own Consolatio.

33 In Tusc. 1.38 Pherecydes is said to have been the first simply to state that the souls of men
were eternal.

34 Cic.fr. 107,23 (Garbarino).

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however, have no need of divination; the divinity itself has revealed us the
truth.

immortality of soul proved by nature of God and man

9l 1T here are thus other arguments, undiscovered by Plato oranyoneelse, by
which the everlastingness of souls can be proved and understood. I will
assemble them without elaboration since my text is fast approaching the
account of God’s supreme judgment; the end of time is coming, and that
judgment will be celebrated on earth. 2 M ost importantly, since God cannot
be seen by man, in case anyone should doubt the existence of God simply
because he is not visible to mortal eyes, there are many miracles he did
among the rest of his activities whose effect is plain but there is nothing to
see of substance. The same applies to speech, smell, and wind, and they
provide argument and example for God not coming within our gaze but
being visible nevertheless in the forceful effect of his works. 3 W hat is more
audible than speech, or fiercer than wind, or stronger than smell? Yet when
they travel through the air and reach our senses and impinge upon them with
all their power, no sharpness of sight beholds them: they are felt by other
senses of the body. 4 So too God is not to be grasped by sight or any other
feeble sense of ours: he must be seen with the mind’s eye, si nee it is his great
and wonderful works that we behold.

5 Those who said there was no god at all are in my view not just not
philosophers but not even human beings: they are identical with dumb beasts,
composed of physical matter only, seeing nothing with their minds and
relating everything to their physical senses; they thought that only what they
could see by eye existed. 6 Because they saw bad things happening to good
men, and good things to bad men, they concluded that all things happened
fortuitously, and that the world was constructed by nature, not by providence.
On that basis they promptly tumbled into the absurdities that were bound to
follow. 7 But if God is incorporeal, invisible and eternal, then it is not
credible that the soul perishes simply because it is unseen after it leaves the
body, since it is agreed that there is something sentient and alive which fails
to come into view anyhow. 8 But, they say, it is hard to understand how the
soul can retain a capacity to feel without the parts of the body where the
capacity is lodged. 9 What about God? Is it easy to understand how he
thrives without a body? If people accept the existence of gods who, if they
exist, are simply souls without bodies, then by the same reasoning there must
be human souls as well: it is as a result of reason and foresight themselves that

410

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

a certain resemblance between man and God is understood to exist. 10 The
argument which even Cicero saw [Leg. 1.24] is conclusive enough, that the
eternity of the soul can be understood from the fact that there is no other
animal which has any knowledge of God, and religion is almost the only
thing which distinguishes man from the dumb creation; the uniqueness of
religion in man iscertainly good evidence that we affect, desire and worship
something which is going to be intimately related to us.

11W hen the nature of the other living creatures is taken into account -
the providence of God most high has made them lowly, with their bodies
prone and flat to the ground, so that their lack of relationship with heaven is
obvious - can anyone fail to realise that man is the only divine and celestial
creature of them all? With his body raised up from the ground, his face
uplifted and stature erect, he is looking for his origin, striving upwards as if
he despised the lowness of earth; he senses that the supreme good must be
sought on high, and he gazes in the direction of his creator because he recalls
the remarkable status his creator gave him. This gaze of his is called 235
'theoptia' (godsight) by Trismegistus, 36 and rightly so too; in dumb creatures
it is non-existent. 12 Since wisdom, which only man has been granted, is
simply knowledge of God, plainly the soul does not perish or disintegrate,
but abides for ever because it seeks and loves the ever-living God, sensing at
the instance of nature herself whence it sprang and where it will return.

13 There is no small further argument for immortality in the fact that use
of the element of heaven is peculiar to man. Since things are naturally
composed of two elements which are contradictories and enemies of each
other, fire and water, and one of them is ascribed to heaven and the other to
earth, the other creatures, being of earth and mortal, avail themselves of the
element which is earthy and heavy, while man alone makes use of fire, the
element that is lofty, light and celestial. 14 Heavy things press us down to
death, and light things elevate us to life, because life is on high and death is
below. There cannot be light without fire: so, there cannot be life without
light. Fireisthereforetheelementof lifeand light, from which itisclearthat
man its user has immortality for hi sal lotted state because the element which
causes life is one that is familiar to him.

15 Another proof of the immortality of the soul is the fact that virtue has
been granted to man alone, and will not follow its natural course if the soul
is extinguished: it is this present life which is hurt by it. The life on earth

35 G indicates that L. uses or quotes G reek.

36 NF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 14.

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which we share with the dumb animals both seeks pleasure, taking delight in
its various attractive rewards, and shuns pain: the harshness of pain assaults
the nature of living things with sharp sensations, pressing them towards
death and disintegration. 16 If then virtue keeps man away from the goods
which are his natural aim and forces him to endurance of evils such as he
naturally evades, then virtue is an evil, and an enemy of nature, and anyone
pursuing it must be reckoned a fool, because he is hurting himself both in
avoiding present goods and also in aiming at evils without hope of a richer
reward. 17 When we are free to enjoy the most delightful of pleasures, we
should plainly lack all sense if we preferred to live abjectly, in need,
contempt and ignominy, oreven notto live at all but to be tortured and diein
agony, getting nothing extra from our miseries by which to gaugethe pleasure
lost; 18 but if virtue is not an evil and deals honourably in despising
pleasures which are foul and vicious, and bravely in fearing neither pain nor
death in order to do its duty, then it must be achieving some good which is
greater than the things it despises. But once death has happened, what
further good is there to hope for than eternity?

Virtue is enduring and carries rewards after death

KXlLet us now move to the things which offer resistance to virtue, so that
they too can be made to argue for the soul’s immortality. 2 All vices belong
in time: they are provoked in the present. The violence of anger is stilled
once vengeance is obtained; lust ends in the body’s pleasure, greed is over
when it is sated with what it wants or when other emotions arise, and ambition
decays once the honours it sought are achieved; the rest of the vices I i kewise
cannot abide and hold firm but are terminated by the very satisfaction they
seek. They therefore come and go, 3 whereas virtue endures for ever without
a break; itcannotwithdraw from the man who has once obtained it. if itwere
to have a gap, if we could be without it for a period, then we should have the
instant return of those vices that are always assailing virtue. 4 If it does go,
if it does ever withdraw, then it was never securely there; whereas once it has
built a safe abode, it takes part of necessity in every act, and it cannot drive
out vice and put it to flight for sure unless it builds a perpetual fort in the
heart where it settles. 5 The perpetuity of virtue is thus a mark of the perman¬
ence of the human spirit once it has attained virtue, because virtue is
perpetual, and only the human spirit attains it.

6 Since, then, the vices are in opposition to virtue, their whole system
must be also. A s the vices are disturbances, or perturbations, of the spirit, so

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virtue, contrarily, is a smoothing, or pacifying, of the spirit; because the
vices are time-bound and short-lived, so virtue is perpetual, constant and
ever self-consistent; because the rewards of the vices, the pleasures, that is,
are as short-lived and time-bound as the vices are, so the reward and prize of
virtue is for always; 7 because the advantage of the vices is immediate, so
the advantage of virtue is in the future.

Thusitisthatthereisno reward for virtue in this life because virtue lives
on too. 8 J ust as the vices cease upon their performance, to be followed by
their pleasure and their rewards, so once virtue is completed it is foil owed by
its reward. But there is no completion of virtue except in death: the supreme
business of virtue lies precisely in the undertaking of death. The reward of
virtue therefore comes after death. 9 Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations
realised, however uncertainly, that man attains his supreme good only after
death [1.110]: 'A man will go to his death, if events so conspire, in a spirit of
confidence, and we know that in death there is either the greatest good or
else no evil.’ So death does not extinguish a man: it escorts him to the reward
of his virtue. 10 But anyone who, as Cicero also says, has fouled himself
with vice and wickedness, and has yielded to pleasure, 37 is damned, and will
pay the everlasting penalty, what holy scripture calls the second death: 38 it
lasts for ever and is full of excruciating pain. 11J ust as man has two lives
before him, one the life of the soul and the other the life of the body, so he
also has two deaths before him, one relevant to the body, a death which all
men must die in obedience to nature, and the other relevant to the soul, a
death which crime can obtain and virtue can avoid. As this life is time-bound
and has fixed limits because it is the life of the body, so too death is equally
time-bound and has its appointed end because it applies to the body.

Body pursues the mortal and soul the immortal

ILlDeath itself will be ended when the times appointed by God for death
have been completed. And because life in time is followed by death in time,
it follows that souls rise again to perennial life, because death in time has
received its end. 2 Again, just as the life of the soul is for always, and it
obtains the divine and inexpressible reward of its own immortality in that
life, so the death of the soul is bound to be for always, and it pays the
everlasting penalty of infinite torment for its sins in that death.

37 Cf. Tusc. 1.2.7; Rep. 6.29.

38 Rev. 2:11. SeealsoAug. civ. 21.3; trin. 4.5.3; c. lul. 6.31.36.

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413

3 The situation is such that people who are in bliss in this corporeal and
earthly life are going to be in misery eternally because they have already
obtained the goods they preferred; that is what happens to those who
worship gods and neglect God. 4 Those who have been in misery in this life
by following justice, however, despised and helpless as they are, and often
pursued with insult and injury precisely because of their justice (because
that is the only way that virtue can be grasped), are going to be in bliss for
ever, so that they have their enjoyment of good because they have already
endured their evil; that is simply what happens to those who despise gods of
earth and perishable goods and follow the heavenly religion of God, whose
goods are as eternal as he himself the giver is.

5 Proof that the soul has no partin death is surely very plain in what body
and soul achieve. The body is frail and mortal: hence whatever it strives to
accomplish is equally liableto fail. Cicero says 39 'There is nothing made by
human hand which is not eventually brought to collapse, whether by assault
of man or by old age itself, the destroyer of all things.’ 6 The achievements
of the soul, on the other hand, are eternal, as we see. Everyone who practises
a keen contempt of things present and leaves something behind him to recall
his great talents and accomplishments has obviously aimed at a name for
intelligence and virtue that will not be wiped out. If then the body's
achievements are mortal because the body is, it follows that the soul can be
seen as immortal because its achievements are seen to be not mortal. 7 In the
same way too, the desires of body and spirit demonstrate that the one is
mortal and the other eternal. The body desires only temporal stuff, food and
drink, that is, and clothes, rest and pleasure, and yet it can neither desire
them nor get them without the assent and assistance of the spirit. The spirit,
however, has many desires of its own which do not concern the business of
the body and its reward, and they are not feeble but eternal, I ike the glory of
virtue and the remembranceof a name. 8 Worship of God, which is based on
abstention from desire and lust, endurance of pain and contempt for death, is
pursued by the soul even in spite of the body. To think that the soul does not
die but is separated from the body thus makes sense, because body without
soul can do nothing, whereas soul without body can do much, and much of
note. 9 W hat about the fact that thi ngs visi bl e to the eye and touchable by hand
cannot be eternal because they are subject to external action, whereas things
not subject to touch or sight (it is only their energy, aim and effect which are

39 L.'s citation contains a word (confectrix) not recorded in OLD; it is recorded, without
attribution however, in Souter. L. may be reworking a sentence of Cicero's quoted at 6.11.25.

414

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

obvious) are eternal because they suffer no force from without? 10 If body is
mortal because it submits equally to sight and touch, then the soul is equally
immortal precisely because it can neither be touched nor be seen.

On the alleged shared fates of body and soul

IZILetus now expose the arguments on the other side, which were pursued
by Lucretius in his third book. Since the soul shares its birth with the body,
he says [3.445-6], necessarily it shares its death with the body. 2 But the
same reasoning does not apply in each case. Body issolid and graspable, by
hand and by eye, but soul is insubstantial and evades touch and sight.

Body is made and compacted of earth; soul has nothing solid in it - no
weight of earth, as Plato argued. 40 Nor could it have its great skill, power and
speed unless its origin were in heaven. 3 Since body is constructed of heavy
and unstable material and can be touched and seen, so it breaks up and col¬
lapses, and because it is subject to sight and touch it cannot resist attack,
whereas soul cannot be undone by any act of violence because its insub¬
stantiality enables it to escape all contact. 4 Thus, though they come into
being yoked as mates, and the one is the other’s container, the one being
formed from earth compacted and the other being a product of celestial
fineness, 41 when any act of violence divides them (the division being what
we call death), each one withdraws into itself: what was earthly is resolved
into earth and what came of the heavenly spirit holds its own and keeps its
vigour because the divine spirit is everlasting. 5 Even Lucretius forgot what
he was arguing and what principle he was defending when he composed the
following verses [2.999-1001]: 'What was previously of earth gives way
likewise and returns to earth, but what came from the coasts of sky is
restored to the gleaming temples of heaven.’ Someone arguing that souls
perish with bodies had no business to say that, but truth prevailed, and the
true analysis slipped in unperceived.

6 Besides, the inference that he draws that the soul breaks up (which is
what perishing with the body means) because the two were born together is
wrong, and it too can be controverted. The body does not break up at the
moment of death: the soul withdraws, but the body stays whole for several
days, and if treated can often last a very long time. 7 If they perished together

40 Phd. 80d.

41 The idea of soul as very fine matter recalls Chrysippus in Calcidius 220 (= LS 53G);
Epic. Ep. ad Hdt. 63ff (= LS 14A), cf. Lucr. 3.417-62 (= LS 14F); and Tert. anim. 5ff., who is
criticised by Aug. gen. ad litt. 10.25.40ff.

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415

in the same way that they were born together, the soul would not abandon
the body and suddenly depart; each would instead disintegrate at one and the
same moment, and even the body would go liquid and perish with the soul
still in it as quickly as the soul withdrew; indeed, upon the disintegration of
the body the soul would vanish like liquid spilling from a broken jar. 42 8 If
our frail and earthly body does not dissolve immediately after the with¬
drawal of the soul and ooze into the earth which is its origin, then the soul,
which is not frail, lasts for ever because its source is everlasting. 9 Since
mind, he says, expands in children, flourishes in the young and dwindles in
the elderly, it is plainly mortal. 43

First: soul and mind are not the same. 44 We live by the one and we think
by the other. When we sleep, the mind rests but not the soul, and in madmen
mind is wiped out but not the soul; hence their labelling as witless, not life¬
less. 10 It is the mind, then, or the intelligence, that grows or declines with
age; the soul is always in its own state: it remains the same from the moment
when it receives its opportunity to breathe till its last moment, when itleaves
the confinement of the body and flies back to its own abode.

11 Next: though the soul receives its breath from God, nevertheless, shut
up as it is in a dark home of earthly flesh, it does not have the know ledge that
belongs to divinity. 12 Everything comes to it by hearing and learning: they
are the means of developing its wisdom. Old age does not diminish wisdom,
but increases it, if, that is, the period of youth was spent virtuously; and if
extreme old age does weaken the limbs, it is no fault of the soul that sight
fades, the tongue goes dull and hearing thickens: 45 they are failings of the
body. 13 But memory fails, it is said 46 No wonder, if the intellect has to suffer
its home collapsing in ruin, and so forgets the past: it will never become
divine unless it escapes the prison that confines it.

14 But the soul is also subject to pain and sorrow, says Lucretius, 47 and
goes witless with drunkenness: hence it is obviously frail and mortal. 15 Virtue
and wisdom are necessary precisely in order that grief, which comes of
suffering and of seeing humiliations, may be repelled by courage, and so that
pleasure (the pleasure not only of drinking but of everything else too) may
be beaten by abstinence. If the soul lacked virtue, if it were devoted to the

42 The image is Lucretian: 3.434-35.

43 Cf. Lucr. 3.445ff.

44 This was also Lucretius' position, however. See 3.138-44.

45 Cf. Lucr. 3.451ff.

46 Cf. Cic. Sen. 7.21.

47 Cf. Lucr. 3.459-86.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

pleasures and went soft, it would become subject to death, since virtue, as
we explained, is the creator of immortality, and pleasure is the creator of
death. 16 As I have shown, death is not an utter destroyer: it applies eternal
torments. The soul cannot just die, because it has its origin in the spirit of
God, which is everlasting. 17 The soul, says Lucretius, 48 can even feel a
physical ailment and lose awareness of itself; yet though it may sicken, it can
often be healed. 18 That is why virtue should most be applied, in case the
soul should crack under any physical pain: losing self-awareness should be
the experience of the mind, not of the soul. The mind has 'its own place in
the body’ [3.610], and that is why it shifts when some disease ravages the
area: it migrates as if its home had been 'shattered' [3.600], though it will
return of course when treatment and recovery have restored its proper abode.

19 If the soul lacks virtue, then because it is linked with the body, it
grows weak at the contact, and the debilitating effect of the link spreads to
the mind; whereas upon separation from the body it will thrive of itself and
will not now be under attack from any context of enfeeblement, having
thrown off its garment of frailty. 20 J ust as an eye, says Lucretius, 49 can see
nothing when torn out of the body, so too the soul can receive no sensations
when separated from the body because it too is part of the body itself. 21 That
is wrong; the comparison does not hold. The soul is not a part of the body,
but merely in the body. The contents of a jar are not part of the jar; the
contents of a house are not part of the house; so too the soul is not part of the
body, because the body isthe container, or the receptacle, of the soul.

22 M uch sillier is his argument 50 saying that the soul is plainly mortal
because it is not released from the body at speed but disentangles itself from
all the limbs little by little, starting with the feet. If it were everlasting, I
suppose he means, itwould burst out of the body all in a moment, as happens
to those who die by the sword! But people who die of disease are longer in
breathing out their spirit: the soul departs little by little as the limbs grow
cold. 23 The substance containing the soul is the blood (as oil is for light);
when the heat of fevers exhausts it, the outermost limbs are bound to grow
cold, because the veins which reach the body’s extremities are narrower;
when the flow of aspring dwindles, it is the little, distant streams that dry up.
24 We must not imagine, however that the soul’s ability to feel is utterly
extinguished just because the body's ability fails. It is not the soul that

48 Lucr. 3.487-522.

49 Lucr. 3.548-79.

50 Lucr. 3.526-47.

BOOK 7: THE LIFE OF BLISS

417

'grows brutish’ [3.545] when the body fails, but the body when the soul
departs, because the soul takes the capacity to feel away with it. 25 Since it
is the presence of the soul which gives the body its capacity to feel and
makes it live, it is impossible for the soul not to live and feel of itself, since
it is itself life and feeling.

26 As for Lucretius saying [3.613-15], 'But if our mind were immortal,
it would not so much complain of dissolution at its death as go off and shed
its garment like a snake,’ 27 I have never seen anyone complaining of his
dissolution at death; but perhaps Lucretius had seen some Epicurean philo¬
sophising while he died, discussing his own dissolution with his last breath.
28 How can it be known whether a man feels himself breaking up or feels
himself being freed from the body? At death the tongue goes dumb! While
he still has feeling and speech, he has not yet broken up, and when he has
broken up he can feel and speak no longer; so complaints about dissolution
are either not yet possible or not now possible. 29 But before he gets broken
up, it will be said, he realises that he is going to be. What of the fact that we
see plenty of people who are dying not complaining of dissolution, as
Lucretius says, but declaring they are departing, and are setting out and
walking, and they indicate as much either by gesture or, if they still can, even
by saying so out loud? It is obvious from this that no break-up is taking
place, but a separation, which makes it plain that the soul persists.

30 All the other proofs of the Epicurean system are at odds with
Pythagoras’ position: he says that souls migrate from bodies that are worn
out by age and death, and they insert themselves in new ones, just born, and
it is the same souls that go on being born, sometimes in a man, sometimes in
a domestic animal, or in a wild beast, or in a bird, and they are immortal in
the sense that they frequently change abode in a variety of different bodies.
31 That is the view of a lunatic: it is ludicrous; it belongs better on stage than
in a school of philosophy, and it is not worth serious refutation because that
would suggesta worry that someone might actually believeit. 32 Everything
spoken against error in error we must leave to one side; it is quite enough to
refute the arguments against truth.

The testimony of prophets and oracles

33.11 have in my view demonstrated the indestructibility of the soul, it
remains to quote the evidence whose authority will confirm the proofs. 2 I
shall not at this point call in the witness of the prophets, whose pattern of
divination depends entirely on their teaching that man was created for

418

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

worship of God and for receipt of immortality from God; instead I shall call
upon people who simply have to be believed by those who reject the truth.

3 In describing the nature of man, Hermes introduced the following
words in order to explain how man was made by God: 5 'The same power
created the nature of man to be one nature composed from two natures, the
immortal and the mortal, making the same creature partly immortal and partly
mortal, and he set him up midway between the divine and immortal nature and
the mortal and mutable, so that he could see everything and admire it all.' 51

4 It may be that Hermes should be counted among the philosophers,
even though he was translated to the gods and ishonoured under the name of
M ercury by the Egyptians; perhaps he deserves no more attention than Plato
and Pythagoras. 5 We should then be looking for a more important piece of
evidence. A certain Polites consulted A polio of M iletus whether the soul lived
on after death or broke up, and Apollo replied in verse as follows: 5 6 'As
long as a soul is bound by fetters to the body, in feeling perishable pains it
yields to mortal anguish. But when it has found that mortal dissolution of
great speed for itself, after the body has decayed, it is entirely borne up into
the sky, ageless for eternity, and it survives unscathed for ever. God’s first¬
born providence so appointed.’ 52

Well? Don'ttheSibylline verses makethesame point when they declare
that a time will come for God’s judgment upon the living and dead? We will
produce examples in a while. 7Theview of Democritus, Epicurus and Dicae-
archus on the dissolution of the soul is therefore wrong. They would of course
not venture to discuss the death of souls if any M agus were present with his
know ledge that souls get summoned from the underworld by spells, and come
and present themselves to human sight, and speak in prediction of the future;
if they did so venture, they would be confounded by the facts and the evidence
presented. 8They said that souls perish because they could not see the soul's
fine structure, a structure so fine that it cannot be seen by the human mind.

9 What about Aristoxenus, 53 who said there is absolutely no soul at all,
even when it is alive in the body? He made comparison with stringed instru¬
ments, saying that a power of perception exists in bodies as a result of the
structure of the guts and the vitality of the limbs in the same way that a
harmonious sound, the harmony that musicians speak of, can be produced

51 NF Corp. Herm. vol. 4, fr. 15.

52 Orac. Apoll. fr. 50 (Fontenrose).

53 Aristoxenus, musician and philosopher (b. Tarentum c. 375-60), studied with the Pytha¬
goreans and with Aristotle. Cicero (Tusc. 1.19) refers to his view of the soul as a 'tuning' of the
body; cf. Plato, Phd. 89.

BOOK 7: THE LIFE OF BLISS

419

from tensioning the strings of an instrument. Nothing can be madder than
that. 10 Aristoxenus’ eyes were sound enough, but his heart was blind: he
failed to see he was living by his heart, and did possess a mind, the mind
with which he had donehisthinking. 11 Philosophers commonly disbelieve
in the existence of anything notvisibleto the eye, though theirability to see
mentally things whose force and aim are felt rather than seen ought to be
much greater than their ability to see physically.

Six thousand years, and one thousand

M.lNow that we have discussed the immortality of the soul, it follows that
we should explain how far it is granted to man, and when, so that on this
point too the mistakes of their own perversity and folly can be seen by those
who think that certain mortals are gods by decree and decision of men,
whether for their discovery of arts and crafts or their indication of the use of
certain plants or their production of things useful to human life or for
destroying dangerous beasts. 2 How far distant these worthy actions are from
immortality has been explained in our previous books, and we will explain it
now too, so that it is cl ear that only justice creates eternal life for man and the
prize of eternal life is bestowed by God alone. 3 There are people said to
have become i mmortal for thei r good deeds; but there was no j ustice i n them,
and no true virtue either, and because of their sins and lusts they have
achieved death for themselves, not immortality; they have earned not the
prize of heaven but torment for ever, and they will pay just as all those who
have worshipped them will pay. I shall show that the time of this judgment is
approaching when the just are paid the reward they deserve and due
punishment is imposed upon the impious. 54

4 Plato together with many another philosopher did not know the origin
of things and that final moment when the world would be completed. They
said that many millennia had gone by since this beautiful world was in full
primal form; perhaps they were following the Chaldeans, who, as Cicero
reports in book 1 de Diuinatione [36] say they have 470,000 years stored in
their records, which is mad. 55 They assumed they were free to lie because

54 The sources of L.'s eschatology are a puzzle. There are contributions to it, by way of
unnamed intermediaries, from early Christian treatments of it, in the first instance from
Revelation (named only in epit. 37.8), from Old Testament prophecy, from Jewish apocalyptic,
and from the Iranian religious and astrological tradition going back at least to Zoroaster (L.
twice cites the oracles of the M edian seer Hystaspes). For a bibliography, see pp. 45-46 n.

55 Cic. Div. 1.36; 2.97. M any different figures were offered. See Pease (1920-23) ad loc.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

they thought they could not be disproved. 5 We who are educated in know¬
ledge of the truth by holy scripture, however, we know the beginning of the
world and its end, and it is the end we shall discuss now, at the end of this
work; we explained the beginning in book 2. 6 The philosophers who count
the centuries in thousands since the world began need to know that the year
6000 has not yet come; when it does come, there will be the inevitable
consummation, and the state of human affairs will inevitably be resolved into
something better. First, proof of this must be given, so that the pattern is clear.

7 God completed the world and this wonderful work of creation within
the space of six days, as is contained in the secrets of holy scripture, and the
seventh day, when he rested from his labours, he made sacred. 56 8 This is the
day called sabbath, which takes its name in the Hebrew language from the
number; hence the number seven is a lawful and full number, for there are
seven days in whose cycle of revolution the cycles of years are completed,
there are seven heavenly bodies which do not set, and there are seven stars
called wanderers whose uneven orbits and incompatible movements are
thought to account for the variations in seasons and circumstances. 57 9 Since
all God’s works were done in six days, the world is bound to abide in its
present state for six periods of time; six thousand years, that is. A great day
of God is completed when a cycle of a thousand years is completed, as shown
by the prophet who says [Ps. 90:4], 'Before thine eyes, o lord, a thousand
years are as one day.’ 58 10 J ust as G od laboured for those six days at his great
work of creation, so his religion and his truth must labour these six thousand
years, while evil is prevalent and dominant. 11 Again, because he rested on
theseventh day when his works weredone, and blessed it, itisinevitablethat
at the end of the year 6000 all evil will be swept off the earth and justice will
reign fora thousand years 59 and there will be peace and rest from the labours
thattheearth has endured for so long. 12 I will explain how thatwill happen.

We have often said that little things, slight things, are signs and fore¬
shadowings of great things; so, thisdayspan of ours which is bounded by the
rise and set of the sun bears a likeness to that great day which is defined by
the revolution of a thousand years. 13 In the same way the shaping of man

56 Gen. 2.1-2.

57 L., following Theophil. Autol. 2.12 (and no one else), attaches the name of Sabbat to the
Hebrew Sheba', 7, by a false etymology. On the number 7, see Gel. 3.10., drawing on Varro's
H ebdomadis, or I magines. See also Cypr. ad Fort. 11.

58 The millenarian reading of Ps. 90:4 is already in 2 Pet. 3:8; Barn. Ep. 15.4; Iren. 5.23.2,
28.3; Justin. dial. 81.3. See Nicholson (1985), 294-95, n. 21.

59 Cf. Rev. 20.1-10.

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421

from earth was a sign for the future of the creation of the people of heaven.
W hen everything that God contrived for the use of man was ready, on the
sixth day hefinally made man himself and introduced him into this world as
if it were his house now carefully built; just so, on the sixth great day true
man is being fashioned by the word of God; that is to say, the holy people is
being shaped for justice by the teaching and precepts of God. 14 J ust as
original man was made mortal and imperfect out of earth, to live in this
world a thousand years, 60 so now from this earthly generation perfect man is
being fashioned, to be given life by God and to be master in this same world
a thousand years. 15 How the consummation will take pi ace and what sort of
end is looming for human affairs will befound by inspection of holy scripture.
16 Utterances by prophets of this world, in agreement with prophets of heaven,
announce an end of things, and shortly after, their ruin; they describe a sort
of extreme old age for a world exhausted and collapsing. 61 17 But as for
what the seers and prophets say will happen before that final conclusion
supervenes, I will search all sources and present it in its totality.

Approaching the end of the world, and of Rome

15.1 It says in the secrets of holy literature that the leader of the Hebrews
with all his household and family crossed into Egypt when pressed by lack
of corn. 62 2 His descendants spent a long time in Egypt, and became a great
nation; when they were oppressed by a heavy and intolerable yoke of slavery,
God struck Egypt with an incurable disease, and liberated his people by
guiding them through the middle of the sea, the people walking on dry
ground when the waves had been parted and pushed to either side. 3 The
king of the Egyptians attempted to pursue them as they fled, but when the
sea returned to its natural state he was trapped with all his forces. 4 This was
a remarkable event, an event of great note; in the immediate context it
displayed the virtue of God to mankind, but in its meaning it was the fore¬
shadowing of a greater event, which God was going to accomplish at the
final consummation of time: for then he will free his people from their
oppressive enslavement to the world. 63 5 At the time there was only one

60 The shortening of man's lifespan after the flood to 120 years was a consequence of sin
(2.12.21-23; epit. 27.5; Gen. 6.3). Here L. uses the original dispensation of a thousand years to
boost the argumentfor a millennium in which the faithful ruiethe earth with God.

61 See 15.14 below; Lucr. 2.1144ff.; NF Corp. Herm. Asclep. 25ff.

62 Gen. 47-50; Exod. 1-14.

63 A different explanation is given in 4.13.22-23. Cf. Cypr. Quir. 2.11.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

people of God and only one nation accommodating them; so Egypt alone
was blasted; now, however, God’s people are a congregation of all tongues
dwelling among all nations and they are oppressed by the tyranny of these
nations, and so all nations, the whole world, that is, must be beaten by blows
from heaven in order to liberate the people who are just and who worship
God. 6 J ust as signs were made at the time to warn the Egyptians of the
disaster threatening them, so at the end of time there will be extraordinary
portents in every element of the world so that all nations may know of the
imminence of the end.

7 As this period approaches the end, therefore, the state of human affairs
is bound to be altered; as wickedness grows stronger, so things will get
worse, so that these times of ours, when iniquity and evil havegrown to their
highest degree, can be deemed happy, virtually golden, by comparison with
the incurable evil then. 64 8 J ustice will grow so rare and impiety, covetous¬
ness, greed and lust will grow so frequent that all good men who happen to
exist at the time will fall prey to criminal sand will be attacked on all sides by
the unjust, and only the evil will be rich, while good men are beset by all
manner of insult and indigence. AII rights will be overthrown and all laws
will perish. 9 No one will hold on to anything unless he seeks or defends it
with force; violence and outrage will be in control of everything. There will
be no faith among men, no peace, no generosity, no shame, no truth: and thus
there will be no security, no order and no respite from evil. 10 AII the earth
will be in upheaval, wars will rage everywhere, all nations will be in arms
attacking each other by turns; neighbour cities will fight each other, and
Egypt will be the first to pay the penalty for its stupid superstitions, and will
becovered with rivers of blood. 65 11T he sword will traverse theglobe reaping
all in its path, laying all low in its harvest, 66 and the cause of the devastation
and confusion will be this: the name of Rome, by which the world is
presently ruled -1 shudder to say this, but I will say it even so, because it will
happen so -, the name of Rome will be razed from the earth, power will
return toAsia, and onceagain Eastwill be master and West will be servant. 67

64 Cf. 4 Ezra 6-7.

65 Cf. Orac. Sib. 5.54ff„ 77,197ff.

66 Orac. Sib. 3.316ff., 350ff.

67 The fall of Rome coincides with the end of the world (cf. 25.6ff. below), and L. welcomes
it no more than Tertullian did (apol. 32.1); not so the author of Revelation (cf. 13-14) and
Hystaspes (see 19 below). The idea that Rome and the world would end together was wide¬
spread among Christians, however they viewed the Roman state. Augustine broke with this
tradition. See M ommsen (1959), 265ff.

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12 It should be no surprise to anyone if an empire founded on such a
base, expanded so long and so widely and buttressed by such great resources
should eventually collapse. There is nothing constructed by human effort which
cannot also be felled by human effort, because the achievements of mortals
are mortal. 13 Other empires flourished before now even longer, yet none
the less they fell. It is recorded that the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks
and the Assyrians all had the governance of the world; all were destroyed
and supreme power came to the Romans in their turn. The more they
outreach other empires in greatness, the further will be their fall, because
what towers above the rest has more mass for its fall. 14 Seneca 68 divided the
ages of Rome into periods very shrewdly. He said that'its infancy came first,
when Romulus was king; Rome was born and brought up by Romulus; then
cameitschildhood undertheother kings, who developed itand gaveitshape
with more extensive education and advice; but when Tarquin was king, and
Rome was virtually grown up, it refused servility and threw off the yoke of
an arrogant rule, choosing to obey laws rather than kings; when this period
of its adolescence was terminated by the end of the Carthaginian war, then at
last it came to its strength and began its young manhood.' 15 OnceCarthage
was put down, so long her rival in empire, Rome stretched out her arm over
all the earth by land and sea, until with all kings and peoples brought under
her yoke any cause for campaigns now failed; she could not use her strength
well, and exhausted herself thereby. 69 16 That was the start of her old age:
torn by civil wars and weighed down by internal evil she reverted to one man
rule as if she had returned to her infancy. W hen the freedom was gone that
she had preserved under Brutus’ lead and inspiration, she grew old: she
seemed not to have the strength to keep going without rulers to prop her up.

17 If that is so, then what is left to follow old age but death? Death soon
is indeed what the prophets say in public, but they disguise it under other
names to prevent easy understanding. 18 The Sibyls say openly that Rome will
perish, and by judgment of God, because she held God’s name in hatred and
in her hostility to justice slew the people brought up to truth. 70 19 Hystaspes
also, king of the M edes long ago, who gave his name to the river now called
Hydaspes, put on record for posterity an extraordinary dream as interpreted
by a boy prophesying: long before the founding of the Trojan race, he said
that the power and name of Rome would be removed from the world. 71

68 Seneca the Elder, Hist. FI (Peter, vol. 2, 91-92), with Vottero 77-78.

69 Cf. Sal. Cat. 10.

70 Orac. Sib. 8.9ff., 165,171-73.

71 Orac. Hyst. fr. 13a in Bidez and Cumont (1938), vol. 2, 366-67.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

The reign of evil

lfiill will explain how this will come about, in case anyone thinks it incre¬
dible. First, Rome's kingship will be extended, and her supreme authority
will be split up and spread amongst many, to its diminution. Next, there will
be constant dissemination of civil strife and no rest from destructive wars,
until there are ten rulers at one time who will share out the earth, not to rule
itbutto wreck it. 2They will get themselves huge armies, abandon all agri¬
culture (which is the beginning of revolution and disaster), and lay every¬
thing waste, breaking it all up and devouring it. 3 Then an enemy of great
power will suddenly rise up against them, from the furthest bounds of the
north, 72 and after destroying three of the kings who will then be in occu¬
pation of Asia he will betaken into alliance by the restand be made chief of
them all. 4 Hewill exercise an oppressive tyranny over the earth, making no
distinction between human and divine, attempting things unspeakable and
loathsome, plotting revolution in his heart to establish his own private rule,
changing the laws and authorising his own, with pollution, plunder, theft and
murder. Finally he will change his name and move the seat of government,
and then the confusion and ruin of the human race will follow.

5 Then there will truly be a time to detest and abominate, when life will
be enjoyable for no one. Cities will be wrecked to their roots; they will die
not just by fire and sword but by constant earthquakes, floods, chronic
disease and frequent famine. 73 6 The air will grow foul and will become
corrupt and pestilent, partly from unseasonable rain and partly from futile
drought, partly from great cold and partly from great heat, and men will have
no fruits of the earth: cornfield, orchard and vineyard will bear nothing; they
will offer great hope in the flower and betray it in the bud. 7 Springs will dry
up, together with rivers, so thatthereisno drink, and water will turn to blood
or brackishness. 8 H ence there will be no cattle on earth, no birds in the sky
and no fish in the sea.

There will also be extraordinary signs in the sky, fretting men’s minds
with great panic, comets with tails, a dark sun, the moon changing colour
and shooting stars descending. 9 These things will not happen in their usual
way: unknown stars will suddenly appear, unfamiliar to sight. The sun will

72 From the north: frequent in OT prophets, e.g.,Jer. 1.13-15; Ezek. 1.4.

73 The influence of Orac. Sib. 8 in the following section has long been noted; Bidez and
Cumont (1938), 368ff., label it a fragment of Orac. Hyst. (fr. 14). Nor should Jewish apoca¬
lyptic be neglected: seee.g. 4 Ezra 5.1-12, the SyriacApocalypseof Baruch 25ff, andj ubilees
23 (all in Charlesworth (1983), 517ff„ 615ff.; (1985), 35ff.).

BOOK 7: THE LIFE OF BLISS

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be overcast for good, so thatdistinction of night and day will scarcely occur,
and the moon will go into eclipse not just for three hours but with a lasting
veil of blood and extraordinary irregularity of orbit, so that people will not
be able to recognise the courses of the heavenly bodies or the pattern of the
seasons; there will be summer in winter or else winter in summer. 10 The
year will shorten, the month will lessen, and the day will be squeezed into a
small span, and stars will fall in great frequency, so that the whole sky will
look blind, with no lights in it. 11 The loftiest mountains will also tumble
and be levelled with the plains, and the sea will become unnavigable.

To prevent anything being missing among the evils of men and earth, a
trumpet will sound from the sky; the Si by I declares it thus: 6 'A trumpet shall
launch its voice of long lamentfrom heaven.' 74 A11 will trembleand shudder
at that note of grief. 12 Then, because of G od’s anger against the people who
do not acknowledge justice, sword, fire, famine and disease will rage, and
above them all an ever-looming panic. Then they will pray to God and he
will not hear them; death will be their prayer and it will not come. Not even
night will give them respite from fear, nor will sleep come to their eyes;
worry and wakefulness will exhaust men’s spirits; they will weep and wail
and gnash their teeth, congratulating the dead and lamenting the living. 75 13 At
these evils, and many more, there will be desolation on earth, and the world
will lose shape and population, as is observed in the Sibylline verses: 6 'The
world will lose its order as people perish.' 76 14 Thus the human race will be
finished off, and scarce a hundred will go where a thousand once went. Two
thirds will die even of God’s worshippers; one third will survive, those that
were put to the proof. 77

Good and evil in combat

17.11 will explain moredirectly how this will happen. 78 When the ending of
time is imminent, a great prophet will be sent by God to convert people to
acknowledgement of God, and he will take on the power to do miracles.
2 Wherever men do not hear him, he will close the sky and take away the

74 Orac. Sib. 8.239.

75 Cf. Orac. Sib. 8.352-56; 2.306-11.

76 Orac. Sib. 7.123.

77 Cf. Orac. Sib. 3.544; Rev. 9.15,18.

78 Aune (1998), vol. 2, 590-93, 726-28, notes similarities in this chapter with Rev. 11:1-
13,13:11-16, but also differences, which he ascribes to the Oracle of Hystaspes. Cf. Bidez and
Cumont (1938), fr. 15, pp. 370ff.

426

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

rainclouds, he will turn water into blood, and will torment people with
hunger and thirst, and if an attempt is made to assail him, fire will proceed
from his mouth and will burn up the man. By such portentous acts of virtue
he will convert many to worship of God.

When all his works are accomplished, a second king will arise in Syria,
born of an evil spirit, the wrecker and destroyer of the human race, who will
wipe out the remnants of previous evil together with himself. 3 Hewill fight
against the prophet of God, and will defeat and kill him, and will leave him
to lieunburied, but after the third day the prophet will come back to lifeand
will be swept up into heaven before the admiring gaze of all. 4 That second
king will certainly be very ghastly in himself, but he will also be a liar: he
will set himself up as god, and will call himself god, and will give orders to
be worshipped as god’s son. He will be given power to do signs and
prodigies, and when they are seen, men will be ensnared into adoration of
him. 5 He will command fire to descend from heaven, the sun to halt in its
course and an image to speak, and these things will happen at his word; 79
very many even of the wise will be drawn to him by these miracles. 6 Then
he will try to overthrow the temple of God, and he will pursue the just
people, and there will be persecution and pressure such as there has never
been, not since the beginning of the world.

7 All those who believe him and go over to him will be marked by him
I i ke cattl e, 80 w hi I e those w ho ref use hi s mark w i 11 ei ther escape to the hi 11 s or
get caught and killed with special tortures. 8 Hewill wrap the just in the
writings of the prophets and cremate them so. He will be given power to lay
the world waste for 42 months. 81 9 In that time justice will be in exile and
innocence will be hated, and the evil in their hatred will plunder the good
like foes. Neither law nor order nor military discipline will survive, none
will respect grey hairs or acknowledge the duty of piety, or show pity to
women or children; everything will be confounded and confused, contrary
to right, contrary to the laws of nature. The whole earth will be wasted as if
in a single act of communal depredation. 10 When this happens, the just and
thosewho pursuetruth will separate themselves from theevil and will flee to
deserts, and when the impious man hears that, he will flare up in anger and
will come with a great army, and he will bring up all his forces to surround
the mountain where thejust are living in order to seizethem. 11 When they
see themselves hemmed in on every side and under siege, they will cry to

79 Cf. Rev. 13.13-14.

80 Cf. Rev. 13.16-17.

81 42 is also the figure in Rev. 13:5.

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God with a loud voice and beg for help from heaven, and God will hear them
and will send them a great king from heaven to rescue them and to free them,
and to destroy all the impious with fire and sword.

The evidence of oracles and seers

3&1 It is the common claim of all prophets who act on God’s inspiration
and of all seers who act at the instigation of demons that this will be so.
2 Hystaspes, whom I mentioned earlier, in describing the iniquity of this
final generation says 'The pious and the faithful will separate themselves
from the evil and will stretch out their hands to heaven with weeping and
wailing, begging forj upiter’s promise; J upiter will look upon the earth, hear
the voices of men and destroy the impious.' 82 All that is true except for one
thing: he said J upiter would do what God will do. 3 Yet even the sending of
God’s son by his father to destroy all the evil and to liberate the pious has not
been omitted without some devilish deception, though Hermes, however,
has not practised dissimulation. In his book entitled Perfect Discourse, after
enumerating the evils we have spoken of, he added this: 2 4' W hen this happens,
my dear A scl epi us, then the lord and father and god and creator of the first
and only god will look upon events and will defy disorder with hisown will,
which isgoodness; hewili end exileand will purify evil, partly by drenching
it in water, partly by burning it with keen fire and sometimes by striking it
with war and plague, and he will restore and re-establish his own world.’ 83

5 The Sibyls also reveal a similar future: the son of God will be sent by
his father most high to free the just from the grip of the impious and also to
w i pe out the unj ust together w ith thei r cruel tyrants. 6 0 ne of the Si by Is reports
thus: 2 'He will come with a wish to destroy the city of the blessed. And a
king sent against him from God will destroy all great kings and mighty men,
and thejudgmentof theimmortal onewill be upon men.' 84 7 Another says: 2
'And then God will send a king from the sun who shall free the whole earth
from evil war.' 85 8 And a third says: 2 'Behold, hewili come in gentleness, to
raise the unbearable yoke of slavery that lies upon our necks, and he will
undo godless laws and the bonds of violence.' 86

82 Orac. Hyst. fr. 15 in Bidez and Cumont (1938), 370-73.

83 NF Corp. Herm. Asclep. 26.

84 Orac. Sib. 5.107-10.

85 Orac. Sib. 3.652ff.

86 Orac. Sib. 8.326ff.

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LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

iai Since human resources are inadequate to dislodge a tyranny of im¬
mense power from a world oppressed - and once the world has been seized,
that tyranny will maintain its position on top with vast armies of criminals -
a calamity of such extent will need divine aid. 2 God will be moved both by
the ambiguous peril of the just and by their pitiful appeal, and will therefore
send his deliverer at once. 87 Then, at darkest midnight, the centre of heaven
will open, so that the light of God descending is vi si ble throughout the world
like lightning. The Sibyl has announced this in verse as follows: 5 'When he
comes, there will be lurid fire at black midnight.' 88 3 This is the night that we
shall celebrate watching for the advent of our king and God. It has a double
meaning: onthatnight he regained life after his passion, and onthatnighthe
will regain his kingship of the earth, 4 for he is deliverer, judge, avenger,
king and God, and we call him Christ.

Before he descends he will give the following sign. 5 A sword will
suddenly fall from the sky, so that the just may know that the leader of the
holy army is about to descend, and he will come with angels accompanying
him to the centre of the earth, and in front of him will go an inextinguishable
flame, and the virtue of the angels will put into the hand of the just all that
host which besieged their mountain, and the host will be killed from the third
hour till evening, and blood will flow in torrents. When all his forces have
been destroyed, only the impious one will escape, and he will be the
destroyer of his own virtue. 6 He is the one called A ntiChrist, but he himself
will claim that he is Christ, and he will fight against the true Christ. When he
i s beaten, he w i 11 f I ee; he w i 11 often renew the f i ght and he w i 11 as often be
beaten, until in the fourth war, when all the impious have been finished off,
he will be beaten down and taken, and at last will pay the penalty for his
wickedness. 7 At the same time the other princes and tyrants who have
devastated the world will be made prisoners with him and will be brought
before the king, and the king will assail them and rebuke them, proving their
own crimes against them, and he will condemn them and deliver them to
well earned punishment.

8 W hen evil is thus wiped out and impiety suppressed, the world will
have peace again; for so many years it has been subject to error and crime,
and has endured a wicked servitude. 9 There will be no more worship of
gods made by hand; their images will be turned out of their temples and off
their couches and burnt, and they will burn together with their extraordinary

87 Cf. Rev. 19:11-21.

88 Orac. Sib. fr. 3.

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offerings. The Sibyl is in agreement with the prophets in having predicted
this too: G 'Let men castoff images with all wealth,’ and the Si by I of Erythrae
has promised, 2 'Forms of gods made by hand shall be burnt.' 89

The first resurrection and how unjust souls can suffer

2QlAfter this the underworld will open and the dead will rise, and thegreat
verdict will be delivered upon them by the same king and God who has
received from his father most high the supreme power both of judgment and
of kingship. As for this judgment and kingship, in the Sibyl of Erythrae we
find as follows: 2 2 'When the fated day comes to its fulfilment, the judgment
of the immortal God will come upon men; upon mankind will come great
judgment and power.' 90 3 In another Sibyl we find: 2 'Then the earth will
gape and reveal Tartarean chaos, and all shall come to the tribunal of God the
king.’ 91 4 And in thesameSibyl elsewhere: 2 'I will unroll the sky and open
the vaults of earth, and I will resurrect the dead by undoing theirfateand the
sting of death. Then I will bring them to judgment, judging the lives of pious
men and impious men.' 92 5 Not all men will then be judged by God, how¬
ever: only those well practised in God’s religion. 93 Those who have not
acknowledged God are already judged and condemned because no verdict
upon them can result in acquittal; holy scripture bears witness [Ps. 1:5]: 'the
impious will not be resurrected for judgment.' 6 Only those who know God
therefore will be judged, and their deeds, their evil deeds, that is, will be
weighed in the balance against their good deeds, so that if their good and just
deeds are more numerous and significant, they will be despatched to the life
of bliss, but if their evil deeds prevail, they will be condemned to punishment.

7 A t thi s poi nt someone may say, 'If the soul isimmortal, how isitbeing
treated as capable of suffering and of feeling punishment? If it is punished as
it deserves, it will simply experience pain, and on that basis even death; if it
is not subject to death, then it is not subject to pain either, and so is not
capable of suffering.' 8 This question, or argument, is met by the Stoics 94 as

89 Orac. Sib. 8.224; 3.618.

90 Orac. Sib. 3.741ff.

91 Orac. Sib. 8.241ff.

92 Orac. Sib. 8.413ff.

93 Cf. Rev. 20:4-5 (the first resurrection).

94 For the Stoic doctrine of everlasting recurrence, see Nemesius 309.5-311.2 ( = LS 52C):
'For again there will be Socrates and Plato and each one of mankind...’; cf. Alexander, On
Aristotle’s Prior Analytics 180, 33-6; 181, 25-31 (= LS 52F), citing Chrysippus; Euseb. P raep.
Evang. 15.20.6 (= LS 54W).

430

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

follows: the souls of men do survive, and are not reduced to nothing by the
intervention of death, but whereas the souls of the just return pure, free of
suffering and blessed to the place in heaven whence they came (orare swept
off to the so-called happy plains, where they have the joy of wonderful
pleasures), 9 impious souls have befouled themselves with evil desires, and
have developed an intermediate nature, between mortal and immortal; by
contact with the flesh they have an element of weakness, from enslavement
to its desires and lusts, and they are marked with a sort of ineradicable stain,
a blemish of earth; over a long passage of time it gets deeply ingrained, and
souls become of such a nature that though not totally extinguishable, being
from God, nevertheless they do become liable to torment because of the
stain of the body, branded upon them for their sins, and that produces the
sensation of pain. 10 This view is put by the poet as follows [Verg. A. 6.735-
40]: 'Why, when life at its last light leaves us, even so not all evil departs
from us poor wretches; not all the plagues of the body depart forthwith;
much that is customary continues to grow within, inevitably, over time, in
mysterious fashion. Therefore are men disciplined by punishment, and they
pay out the penalty for ancient evils.' 11 That is virtually true. W hen the soul
makes its separation from the body, it is, as the same poet puts it [Verg. A.
6.702], 'one with the insubstantial winds, and very I ike fleeting sleep,’ because
it is spirit, and ungraspable precisely because of its insubstantiality; we
cannot grasp it because we are corporeal, but God can, because it is God’s
part to be omnipotent.

How unjust souls can suffer (continued)

2L1 First therefore we say that God’s power is so great that he can even
grasp the incorporeal and can affect it as he wills. 95 The angels fear God
because they can be chided by him in some unaccountable fashion; the
demons are terrified of him because he can torture them and punish them.
2 So there is no surprise if souls are immortal and yet liable to suffering from
God. Since they have nothing in them which is solid enough to take an
impression, they cannot feel the force of things sol id and corporeal; because
they live in the spirit only, they are impressible only by God, whose virtue
and effect is of the spirit. 3 Even so, holy literature tells us how the impious
will pay their penalties. Because they committed their sins in the flesh, they

95 For Bidez and Cumont (1938), 373-74; this chapter contains Hystaspian material ( = fr.
16).

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will be reclothed in flesh, so that they make expiation in the body; but it will
not be the flesh in which God clothes man, something similar to this earthly
flesh of ours, but a flesh indestructible and everlasting, so that it can take
torture and eternal fire (the nature of this fire is different from that of the fire
we use for the necessities of life, which dies unless kept fed with fuel of
some sort). 4 The divine fire lives all the time by its own means and thrives
without any feeding; it has no contamination of smoke, but is pure and liquid,
fluid likewater; itisnotforced upwards by something asourfireis, which is
compelled by the stain of the earthly body that holds it and by its own
admixture of smoke to leap up and fly upwards, fluttering and quivering to
attain its heavenly nature. 96

5 it is therefore that same divine fire, with one and the same power of
effect, which will both burn the impious and remake them, and what it takes
away from their bodies it will replace in full, and so keep itself supplied with
constant sustenance (this is what the poets mean by the vulture of Tityus). 97
Without any loss to their self-renewing bodies it will thus simply burn them
and make them feel the pain. 6 Yet when God judges the pious, he will test
them too with fire. Those whose si ns are excessive in weight or number will
be scorched and burnt by the fire, but those who are fully imbued with justice
and are ripe in virtue will not feel it, since they have in them an element of
God to repel the effect of the flame and to reject it. 7 The power of innocence
is so great that the fire retreats before it with no harm done because it has
received its mission, of burning the impious and respecting the just, from
God. 98 No one should think that souls are judged immediately upon dying,
however; all are kept under one common guard until the moment comes when
their merits are tested by the supreme judge. 8 Then the prize of immortality
will go to those whose justice of behaviour is established, but there will be
no resurrection for those whose sins and crimes are exposed; they will be
buried in the same darkness with the impious, doomed to certain punishment.

96 Cf. Sen. Nat. 2.24.3.

97 Tityus suffered the perpetual laceration of his liver by vultures for having assaulted Leto
(cf. M in. Fel. 35). The idea of a fire which does not consume what it burns is characteristic of
Stoic thought, butisgiven asecond life in Christian thinking on eternal punishment (see Tert.
apol. 48.14).

98 Orac. Sib. 2.253-55; 8.410ff.

432

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Poets are authorities for resurrection

221Some people think this is a poetic fabrication; they say it is impossible
because they don't know the poets' sources. Their view is not surprising.
2 What the poets report is inconsistent with reality; they may go much
further back than historians and orators and other sorts of writers, but
because they did not know the mystery of the divine promise, and mention
of a future resurrection had reached them only as a faint rumour, they passed
it on as a story without credibility, having heard it only casually. 3 And yet
they also said they had no sure authority to follow, but only opinion; for
instance, Vergil says [A. 6.266], 'M ay it be right for me to say what I have
heard.' 4 Despite, then, their partial distortion of the secrets of truth, never¬
theless the reality emerges all the more truly because of their partial agree¬
ment with the prophets, and that is sufficient for us as proof of the matter."

5 There is, however, some sense in their mistake. The prophets had kept
asserting that the judge of the dead would be god's son, and this was no
covert pronouncement; but because they thought that the god who ruled the
sky was J upiter, they said it was J upiter's son who was judge in the under¬
world, not meaning Apollo or Bacchus or M ercury, who are considered gods
of heaven, but someone who had been both mortal andjust, M inosorAeacus
or Rhadamanthus. 100 6 They therefore exercised a corrupting poetic licence
on the tradition - or else truth was altered by opinion, once it had passed
through different lips in a variety of telling. 7 They said there was restitution
to life after a thousand years in the underworld, with Vergil saying [A.
6.748-51], 'All these will be summoned to the river of Lethe in a great
phalanx by god when they have worked theirthousand year cycle, to seethe
curves of sky again without, of course, remembering them, and to kindle the
desire of regaining their bodies', 8 but they got it wrong; the idea is that the
dead will rise again not after a thousand years of being dead but to be
restored to life again and to reign a thousand years with God. For God will
come to cleanse this world of all stain, to revive the souls of the just in new
bodies, and to raise them to eternal bliss. 9 Apartfrom the water of oblivion
the rest is true; that particular story was meant to deal with the question why
they had not then remembered that they had once been alive, or who they
were, or what they had done. Nevertheless, it is not plausible, and the whole
thing can be rejected as a wild and wanton fiction.

99 L. has explained and defended his use of poets as authorities in Book 1. See e.g. 1.5.4,
11.23ff. and 15.5.

100 See note at 3.20.17.

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10 When we assert the resurrection, however, and explain that souls will
return fora second life fully cognisant of themselves, in the same shape and
with the same capacity to feel, there is opposition: 'So many centuries have
passed; what resurrection has there ever been from the underworld, even
one, for us to take that precedent as proof of the possibility?’ 11 But resur¬
rection is not possible as long as injustice is still in control. People are still
being killed in this generation by the violence of sword, plot and poison;
they are still suffering brutality, want, imprisonment, torture and proscrip¬
tion. 12 In addition, justice is hated, and all who wish to follow God are not
merely loathed but attacked verbally and tortured physically in all sorts of
ways, forced to an impious worship of manufactured gods not by reason and
truth but by unspeakable physical violence.

13 Would it be right, then, for men to rise to all that again, or return to a
life in which they cannot be safe? Since the just are treated with such
contempt and are put out of the way so easily, what are we to think would
have happened if someone did comeback from the underworld and regained
life with full restoration of rights? 14 He will certainly be whisked out of
view, in case sight or sound of him made everyone abandon the gods and
switch to the worship and religion of the one God. 15 Resurrection is
therefore bound to happen once only, at the removal of evil, because it is not
right for those who have risen again to die any more or to be attacked in any
way, so that they can live the life of bliss with their death cancelled. 16 The
poets knew that this generation abounded in every ill, but they set up a river
of oblivion, in case souls remembered their difficulties and refused to return
to the upper world. 17 H ence Vergi I's I ines [A. 6.719-21]: '0 father, mustwe
think that some souls go hence aloft to heaven, and return to the tardy flesh
again? Poor things, what is this dreadful longing for the light?' 18 They did
not know the form or the time in which it should happen; they thought it was
a second birth, and souls would return to the womb again and regress to
infancy. 19 Henceeven Plato says, 101 in discussion of the soul, that'it can be
understood that souls are immortal and divine from the fact that in children
there is a flexibility of mind and a readiness in learning, because they grasp
what they learn so quickly that they appear not to be learning from scratch
but to be regaining knowledge from memory.’There you have an intelligent
man foolishly putting his trust in poets.

101 Cf. Cic. Tusc. 1.57ff. (citing PI. M en. 85c); Sen. 21.78.

434

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

Philosophers in confusion over resurrection

23.1 They will not be reborn because rebirth is impossible; they will rise
again to be endowed by God with bodies, and they will remember their
former lives and all their actions; they will have place among the goods of
heaven, they will enjoy the pleasure of untold plenty, and will give thanks to
God face to face because he has destroyed all evil and has raised them to his
kingdom and to life eternal. 2 On the topic of resurrection, the philosophers
have also attempted to say something, but with as much distortion as the
poets. Pythagoras argued that souls moved into new bodies, but it was silly
to argue that they moved from men into animals and from animals into men,
and that he himself had been recreated from Euphorbus. 3 Chrysippus, called
by Cicero a pillar of the Stoic portico, put it better: in his books on pro¬
vidence, in speaking of the renewal of the world, he said: G 'In these
circumstances it is plain that we too could perfectly well return to the form
we now have in some period of time after dying.' 102 4 Let us move from the
human to the divine. The Sibyl speaks as follows: 2 'All the mortal race is
hard of belief, but when the judgment of the world and men arrives, which
god himself will give when he judges impious and pious alike, then he will
despatch the impious to darkness in fire, but those who are pious shall live
on the earth again, and god will give them breath, esteem and life.' 103 5 If not
only the prophets but also seers, poets and phi losophers agree that there wi II
be a resurrection of the dead, no one should ask of us how it can happen; no
explanation can be given of God's works, but if God did institute man from
thestartin somefashion impossibleto describe, then wemay be sure that he
who made new can also restore the old.

J udgementand the golden age

24.1 Now for the remainder. The son of God most high and most great will
come to judge the living and the dead, as the Si by I testifies when she says: G
'T here will beconfusion of men all over earth at the time when the almighty
comes in person to his tribunal to judge the souls of the living and the dead
and to judge the whole world.' 104 2 When he has destroyed injustice and
made his supreme judgment and restored to life the just who were so from
the start, he will spend a thousand years with men and will rule them with

102 Cic. Ac. 2.75.

103 Orac. Sib. 4.40-43,186ff.

104 Orac. Sib. 8.81-83.

BOOK 7: THE LIFE OF BLISS

435

great justice. 105 This is proclaimed by another Sibyl prophesying in a frenzy: 0
'Hear me, o mortals: the everlasting king is reigning.' 106 3 Atthatti me, those
alive in the flesh will not die but will produce children without number
during those thousand years, 107 and their offspring will be holy and precious
to God; those raised from the underworld will be in charge of the living like
judges. 4 Other peopl e will notbewiped out altogether; somewill beleftfor
God’s victory, so that the just may triumph over them and put them into
perpetual servitude. 5 At the same time even the prince of demons, who is
the fabricator of all evils, will be putin chains and kept under guard for the
thousand years of heaven’s control, when justice will reign on earth, in case
he tries to start any evil against God’s people. 108 6 After God’s coming the
just will gather from all over the world, and after hisjudgment the holy city
will beset up at the centre of earth, and God himself will dwell in it with the
justin control. 109 This city is whattheSibyl points to when she says: 0 'This
is the city that god desired, and he has made it brighter than the stars and sun
and moon.' 7 Then the darkness that clouds the earth and blocks out the sky
will be removed from earth, and the moon will take on the sun's brightness
and not be reduced thereafter, and the sun will become seven times brighter
than itnow is. 110 The earth will disci ose its ferti I ity and breed richfruitof its
own accord, the rocks of the hills will ooze with honey, and the rivers will
swell with milk; the world itself will rejoice and all nature will be glad at
being plucked into freedom from the dominion of evil, impiety, wickedness
and error. 111 8 Wild beasts will not feed on blood in this period, nor birds on
prey; everything will instead be peaceful and quiet. Lions and calves will
stand together at the stall, wolf will not seize lamb, dog will not hunt, hawk
and eagle will do no harm, and children will play with snakes. 112

9 This will be the time for all those things to happen that the poets
claimed for the golden age when Saturn was king. The mistake about them
arises from the fact that prophets foretelling the future keep putting plenty

105 Cf. Rev. 20:1-6; Dan. 7:9, 22, 27; Isa. 11. See Jerome, ui r. ill. 18 for Christian writers
(including L.) who treated this topic. L., as was his custom, gives prominence to the Sibyl and
to Vergil, but also draws on prophecy in the Old Testament in painting his own picture of the
M illennium.

106 Orac. Sib. fr. 4.

107 Cf, Isa. 6:12.

108 Cf. Rev. 20:2.

109 For the city, see 26.1 below; Rev. 20:9; J ustin, dial. 81.4, citing Isaiah and Revelation.

110 Cf. Isa. 30:26.

111 Cf. Ezek. 47:12; Amos 9:13ff.; Joel 4:18.

112 Cf. Isa. ll:6ff., 65:25; Orac. Sib. 3.619-23, 8.210ff.

436

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

forward like that, delivering it as if it has taken place. 113 Visions were put
before their eyes by the divine spirit, and they saw things in their sight as if
in process and completion. 10 Their words of prophecy were slowly spread
by rumour, but those outside God’s mystery did not know their scope; they
thought it was all stuff over and done with long before, because it simply
could not take place in the reign of a man.

11W hen wrong religions have been destroyed, however, and crime has
been suppressed, and the earth is subject to God, 'M erchants will leave the
sea, ship’s timbers will not haggle for bargains; all things will grow
everywhereon earth.The soil will suffer no ploughshares, the vine no knife;
the sturdy ploughman too will release his oxen from the yoke’ [Verg. Eel.
4.38-41], Then too, 'The field will slowly turn yellow with soft awns, and
thegrapewill hang reddening amid uncut brambles, and tough oaks will drip
the dewy honey' [28-30], 'Wool will not learn to copy different colours: the
ram at pasture will vary his fleece himself, sometimes to a soft pink hue,
sometimes to yellow ochre, and red dye will dress the feeding lambs of its
own accord’ [42-45], 'Nanny goats will bring their milk-distended udders
home themselves, and herds will have no fear of great lions' [21-22],

12 Vergil follows the Sibyl of Cumae in saying this. The Sibyl of Erythrae
puts it thus: 6 'Wolves and lambs will eat grass on the hills together, and
leopards will feed with kids; bearswill grazeamong calves and all cattle, the
carnivorous lion will eat bran at the manger, and snakes will bed down with
infants.' 114 13 Elsewhere, on thefertility of nature: 6 'Then god will givemen
great joy, for earth and trees and the countless offspring of earth will give
men the true fruit of wine, sweet honey, white milk and grain, and that is for
mortals the most beautiful of all things.’ 115 14 Again in like fashion: 6 'The
holy earth, abode of the pious alone, will produce all these things; a stream
will flow from a rock dripping honey, and milk too from an immortal spring
for all just men.’ 116 15 People will thus live lives of great peace and plenty,
and will reign side by side with God; kings of nations will come from the
endsof the earth with offerings and gifts to honour and adore the great king,
and his name will be known and revered by all people under heaven and by
all kings with dominion on earth.

113 Vergil, however, guided by the Sibyl, was not in error insofar as he looked forward to a
Golden Age in the future.

114 Orac. Sib. 3.787ff.

115 Orac. Sib. 3.619ff.

116 Orac. Sib. 5.281ff.

BOOK 7: THE LIFE OF BLISS

437

No more than two hundred years remain

25blThis is what the prophets said would happen. I have not thought it
necessary to set out what they say in evidence because it would go on for
ever; my book could not manage so much material when so many people are
saying the same things in the same spirit, and I would not want to bore my
readers by piling up stuff gathered from all of them; besides, what I would be
saying would simply be confirmation drawn from the writingsof others, not
my own words, and I would be pointing out that the truth is kept recorded not
just with us but also with those very people who keep persecuting us - though
it is a truth which they refuse to acknowledge. 2 Anyone wanting to know
this more precisely should go to the fountainhead itself: they will discover
more wonderful things than I have managed to get into these books of mine.

3 Someone may now ask when these things will happen which we have
spoken of. I have already pointed out above that the change should occur at
the end of six thousand years, and that the supreme day of final conclusion is
already approaching. 4 We can learn from the signs which the prophets have
predicted: they have told us the signs by which we should expect the
consummation of all time daily and also fear it. 5 The timing of it is set forth
by those who have written upon timing; they have searched in holy literature
and in various histories for the number of years gone by since the beginning
of the world. They differ; their numbers vary somewhat; nevertheless, the
universal expectation appears to be for a maximum of two hundred years
more. 117 6 The circumstances themselves make it clear that the slide into
ruin will come soon, except that no part of it seems fit to fear as long as
Rome is intact. 7 But when the chief city of the world does fall, and the
rush 118 starts that the Si by Is predict, then the end will be there without doubt
for deeds of men and for the whole world. 8 Rome is the city which has kept
everything going so far, and we must pray to God in heaven with due
adoration - if, that is, his statutes and decisions can be deferred - that the
awful tyrant does not come sooner than wethink, that loathsome tyrant with
his great task to achieve and the famous light to put out, at whose death the
world itself will collapse. 119 9 Let us now return to following out the other
things which will then ensue.

117 L. probably based his calculation onTheoph. Autol. 3.28 (5,695 years from the creation
to the death of M .Aurelius in AD 180), but Theophi I us was not here concerned with the end of
the world. See N icholson (1985).

118 L. uses the Greek word rhume, rush, to pun on Roma.

119 As in 15.11 above, L. represents the collapse of Rome as an undesirable event.

438

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

E nd of the M illennium, the last battle, the second resurrection

2&lWesaid a little earlier that at the beginning of the holy reign the prince
of demons would be put in chains by God. When the thousand years of the
reign (which is seven thousand years of ours) begin to end, he will be set free
again, and once released from custody he will go forth and gather all the
nations then under the control of the just to make war upon the holy city. 120
A countless host of people will gather from all over the world, and they will
surround the city and lay siege to it. 2 Then God's final wrath will come
upon the nations, and he will campaign against them to their last man. First
hewill produce the strongest earthquake possible; asa resultof itthe moun¬
tains of Syria will crack, the valleys will slide away precipitously, and the
walls of all cities will fall down. God will fix the sun not to set for three days;
he will set it on fire, and excessive heat and great burning will descend upon
warring and impious peoples, with clouds of sulphur, storms of hailstones
and gouts of fire; people’s breath will liquefy in the heat, their bodies will be
smashed by hail and they will work their swords on each other; the hills will
be full of corpses and the plains will be covered with bones. 121 3 The people
of God, however, will hide for those three days in hollows of the earth, until
thewrath of God against the nations and hisfinal judgment are done. 4Then
thejust will emerge from their lairs to find everything covered with corpses
and bones, but the whole population of theimpiouswill be utterly dead, and
there will be no nation on earth any more except the one people of God.
Then for seven continuous years woods will be untouched and no timber
will be cut from the hills; the weapons of the gentiles will be burnt, and there
will be no more war: instead there will be peace and quiet for evermore. 122

5 When the thousand years are over, God will renew the world, fold up
the sky and alter the earth. Hewill transform men to look like angels, and
they will be white as snow; they will be at all times in the sight of the
almighty, and they will sacrifice to their lord and serve him for ever. 6 At the
same time there will be that second, public resurrection of everybody, when
the unjust will be ejected into eternal torment. 123 The unjust are those who
worshipped things made by hand, who did not know or refused to acknow¬
ledge the lord and father of the world. 7 Their lord will himself be arrested

120 Rev. 20:7.

121 Cf. Ezek. 38:20, 22.

122 Cf. Ezek.. 39:9ff.; Orac. Sib. 3.724ff.; Rev. 20:10-15.

123 Cf. Rev. 20:11-13 (without specific reference to a second resurrection). For the first
resurrection, of the faithful only, see 20.4 above.

BOOK 7: THE LIFE OF BLISS

439

with his servants and will be condemned to punishment, and with him the
whole mob of the impious will be burnt for their si ns for ever with perpetual
fire in the sight of the angels and the just.

8 This is the teaching of the holy prophets which we Christians follow,
and this is that wisdom of ours, which is derided as folly and emptiness by
people who worship breakable things or practise futile philosophy just
because we have no custom of defending or asserting it in public; God
instructs us to be still and silent, keeping his secret under cover within our
consciences, and not to fight with a bitter determination against these people
who are right outside the truth, who make their vicious attacks on God and
hisreligion notto learn anything but to quibbleand mock. 9 Itisa mystery,
to be hidden away under cover as faithfully as possible, especially by us,
since we have the name of faithful; 10 yet they see this silence of ours as
cause to accuse us of an evil conscience. Hence their invention of certain
outrageous attitudes towards people who are decent and innocent, and these
inventions they readily believe.

10a 124 AII fictions have now, most holy emperor, been laid to rest, ever
since God most high raised you up to restore the abode of justice and to
protect the human race. Now that you are ruler of the world of Rome we
worshippers of God are no longer treated as criminals and villains; as the
truth comes clear and is brought to light we are not put on trial as unjustfor
trying to do the works of justice. No one now flings the name of God at us in
reproach, no one calls us irreligious any more, for we are the only religious
people of them all: we scorn images of dead men; we worship the true and
I i vi ng G od. 10b The providence of the most high godhead has promoted you
to supreme power so that you can in the trueness of your piety rescind the
wicked decrees of others, correct error, provide for the safety of men in your
fatherly kindness, and finally remove from public lifesuch evil men asGod
has ousted with his divine power and has put into your hands, so that all men
should be clear what true majesty is. 10c They had sought to be rid of the
worship of the one heavenly God in order to protect impious religions: now
they lie defeated, and you, who defend his name and adore it, in the might of
your virtue and prosperity enjoy your immortal glories in utter bliss. lOd
They are paying, and have paid, the penalty for their wickedness; you are
protected from all dangers by the powerful right hand of God, who gives you

124 The remaining text of this chapter appears in the M SS which carry it (S and g; see note
on 5.27a above) two sections later than it is printed here, at the end of 27.2, but editors agree that
it belongs here. On the invocations of Constantine, see pp. 48-49.

440

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

a tranquil and peaceful power of control amid expressions of great gratitude
from all. lOe It was not wrong of the lord and ruler of the world to pick you
out above all others through whom to re-inauguratehis holy religion, because
you were the only one to demonstrate special qualities of virtue and holi¬
ness, and through them not just to equal but also, and most importantly, to
surpass the glory of emperors of old, even though by reputation they are
counted among the good emperors. lOf In their own natures they were per¬
haps the bare equivalent of just men; a man who does not acknowledge God
as the controller of the universe may yet achieve a likeness of justice, but
cannot attain the thing itself, lOg but you aretheconsummation of justicein
your every act because of your inborn holiness of behaviour and your
acknowledgement of truth and God. It was right therefore that in giving
shape to the human race the godhead should make use of you as his advocate
and minister. In our daily prayers we beg him first to guard you as his chosen
guardian of the world and secondly to inspire in you a will to abide for ever
in love of the divine name: for that is good for all men, for you, for your
prosperity and for the rest of us for peace.

E ndure evil and strive for virtue and its rewards

27.1Seven laps of the work intended are done and we have come through to
the finishing post; all that remains is to urge all people to adopt wisdom and
true religion together. All the proper focus of wisdom ison despising earthly
things, on discarding errors that held us previously when we were in thrall to
things breakable and greedy for things fragile, and on aiming for the ever¬
lasting prizes of our treasure in heaven. To get them we must abandon as fast
as possible the wrongful pleasures of this present life, which beguile men’s
minds with a ruinous delight. 2 There is such a fund of happiness in being
freed from these stains of earth and in setting out towards that fairest of
judges and kindest of fathers, who bestows peace instead of toil, life instead
of death, light instead of darkness, goods eternal and celestial instead of
goods earthly and brief; the bitterness and misery we suffer here on earth
when we perform our acts of justice cannot be compared or matched at all
with that reward. 3 If we want to be wise, if we want to have bliss, we must
not only keep those words of Terence before us for contemplation [Ph. 249],
that 'we must work at the mill, get flogged and carry fetters’, but much worse
than that: there are prison, chains and torture to bear, pain to suffer, and even
death itself to be accepted and endured, for it is plain to our consciences that
fragile pleasure will have its penalty and virtue will have God’s prize.

BOOK 7: THE LIFE OF BLISS

441

4 Everyone should therefore make an effort to aim for the right path in
life as fast as possible, or to adopt the virtues and practise them and work
patiently through the troubles of this life to earn the presence of God for his
consolation. 5 Our lord and father, who built the sky so strong and gave it the
sun and other heavenly bodies, who poised the earth in all its extent, walling
it with mountains, girding it about with sea and dividing it with rivers, who
created and made out of nothing everything there is in this world of his: he
saw the mistakes of men, and sent a guide to open the path of justice for us.
6 Let us all follow that guide, hear him and obey him with utmost devotion,
for he alone, as Lucretius says [6.24-28], 'purged the hearts of men with
words of truth, put an end to lust and fear and explained what the supreme
good would be to which we all aspire, and showed us the path by which we
could attain it, travelling straight on its narrow track.’ 7 Hedid notjustshow
us the path; he travelled it before us, in case its difficulty might cause some
to shrink from the way of virtue. The path of perdition and deceit must be
abandoned if at all possible: on it lurks death, concealed by the attractions of
pleasure.

8 The more a man’s years approach old age, and he can see the day
coming when he must depart this life, let him consider how to be gonewith
purity and how to come to his judge with innocence, not as some do who
lean on a blindness of mind; when their strength begins to fail, they use that
warning of the closeness of ultimate necessity to go for the satisfaction of
their desires ever more greedily and more ardently. 9 People must free
themselves from that maelstrom while they can, while the chance is there,
and turn themselves totally to God, to await that day in safety when God
presiding as lord of the world will givejudgment on the deeds and thoughts
of each one of us. People should not just ignore the prizes of this world; they
should shun them, reckoning their own souls more important than these
deceptive goods. Possession of them is uncertain and short-lived, 10 because
they shift daily, departing much more swiftly than they came, and even if we
do have licence to enjoy them to the last moment, in the end they must be left
to others. We can take nothing with us except a life well lived in innocence.
11 We come to God with plenty, we come with an abundance, if we come
with self-control, mercy, endurance, love and faith. That is our inheritance,
and it can neither be stolen from any man nor be bestowed upon another.

12 Who would like to make these goods ready for his own possession?
Let the hungry come, to be filled with food of heaven and to lay aside long
starvation; let the thirsty come, to drink with full throat the water of salva¬
tion from the everlasting spring. 13 With this food and drink of God the blind

442

LACTANTIUS: DIVINE INSTITUTES

will see, thedeaf will hear, the dumb will speak, the lame will walk, the stupid
will be wise, the sick will recover, and the dead will live again. 125 14 A11 who
use their virtue to trample down the corruptions of the earth will be raised to
light and lifeperpetual by that supreme and truthful judge. 15 No one should
put faith in wealth or instruments of authority, or even in royal power: they
make no one immortal. Those who reject the whole purpose of man to
pursue the immediate, prostrating themselves to the ground, will be punished
as deserters of him who is their master, their commander and their father.

16 L et us therefore go for j ustice, our only and i nseparable friend to lead
us through to God, and ' w hi I e the spi ri t guides these I i mbs' [Verg. A. 4.336],
let us fight the unwearying fight for G od, manning his guardposts and keep¬
ing his watches, and let us close bravely with the enemy we know, so that in
victory and triumph over our beaten foe we may win from our lord the prize
for virtue which he himself has promised.

125 Cf. Mt. 11:5.

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INDEX OF TOPICS

actors 120.10; 620.9ff; see theatre
Academics p.9; 16.2; 28.14; 33.7ff,
4.11,5.3, 6.5-20, 7.10,15.3,
28.17-19; 75.2, 7.2-3; and see
Index of Proper Names under
Arcesilaus, Carneades, Cicero,
Socrates

adultery pp.30, 39-40; 19.Iff, 10.4ff &
lOff; 623.24ff.

advocates pp.2,13-14; 31.5,13.12n; 5
1.22

angels 17.4, 8, 9; 214.1, 3,16.6-8; 4
6.2, 8.6 & 9,14.17; 75.9, 6.1,
19.5, 21.1, 26.5

anger pp.32, 50-51; 65.13-14,15.3ff,
16.10,19.2ff; see god, anger of;
judgement, last

animals pp.8, 24, 25, 34; 22.20, 8.37,
10.1, 13.11,18.6; 310.Iff; 4
12.2; 517.30-33; 75.20
antipodes 324
antiquarians 112.8
apocalyptic, see eschatology
apologists for Christianity pp. 12-14;
their deficiencies 51.21-2.1, 4;
and see Index of Proper Names
under Arnobius, Cyprian,

M inucius Felix, Theophilus,
Tertullian

apostasy 59.11,11.15
army, see empire, God as general,
militia of God, soldiery, war
astrology 216.1; 325.11
atoms 317.21- 27; 73.23ff, 7.8
augurs, augury 122.4; 27.7,16.1; 5
19.10

bliss, life of, see happiness
body pp.12,22,26, 35; 22.24, 3.8,
8.68, 9.22,12.3ff; 36.3,12.2,
27.15; 521.10ff; 66.6; 72,4.12,
5,11-12; and see soul
burial 612.25-30

cannibalism 112.2-3; 620.18n
causidicus, see advocates
chaos 15.8-9

charity p.31; 69.8,10.9, 22-27,11-12
chastity pp.11-12; 622.2-23
children pp.29, 45 n.181; 43.15-17,
4.1-2, 5, 28.7-9 & 13, 29.7-9; 5
8.6,13.3,12, 18.14-15,19.14; 6
3.15,12.23, 24.3; see exposure,
infanticide

Christ, as son pp.15,16,18, 24; 46-9,
29; incarnation p.32; 412-13; as
high priest 414; his life and
mission pp.9-10, 43; 415;
passion p.10; 416-19, 26.17-42;
resurrection 419; return to
Galilee 420; ascension 421; as
teacher pp.9-10, 24, 46; 411,
23-25; miracles of p.2; 413.17,
15,16.5, 26.1-16; 53.7-10, 18-
21; 79.2; see Index of Proper
Names under Christ
Christians pp.17, 22, 29, 31, 43, 45, 48,
49,50, 53; 430.10,13; 52.4,

13,11.13,13.8; 726.8
Church pp.43-44, 47, 49-50; 410.1n,
13.26-14.3, 21.2, 30.4, 11; 52.2
circus 27.20; 620.32,35
city of the millennium 724.6, 26.1
cities, origin of 610.13-15

454

INDEX OF TOPICS

citizens, Roman 117.7n, 21.23n; 4
18.10

compassion, see charity, pity
concubinage 623.23
conscience 51.12; 624.11-21
constancy 614.3,17.24-29
creation 28-11; see God as creator
cremation 717.8

crucifixion, of Christ 426.24-27.5; see
Christ, passion

cult, cults, see religion, pagan, worship
Cynics/Cynicism 315.20-21
Cyrenaics 38.9,15.15

death 13.9; 212.9, 20; 318.1ff, 19.1-
13; 425.7, 27.16; 517.20, 24; 6
17.5; see suicide

demons 17.9; 214-16,17.10-11; 4
14.17, 27.1-18; 519.1, 21.3-6;
718.3, 21.1; see devil
devil p.37; 21.13, 8.4-6i, 12.10-11,
17-18, 14.1-6; 63.14,4.2,17,

6.5, 7.3-8,22.3-5, 23.4-8; 7

24.5, 26.Iff; and see evil
dialectic 313.4-5
Donatists 624.In

dualism pp.27-28, n.106; 28.3-6i, 12;
and see virtue and vice, good
and evil

earth 22.24, 6.2,12.3-11,18.4-6; 3
24.4ff; 61.10-11; see world
education 67.1-2; and see eloquence,
oratory, rhetoric

eloquence 11.9-11; 31.1; 51.15-20,
19.16; see oratory, rhetoric,
emotions p.32; 25.34; 422.3; 615-23;

see passions, pleasures
emperor-worship 115.6 see ruler
worship

empire pp.33, 37, 41, 45; 118.8ff; 2
16.16-18; 516.4; 64.18-23,
5.15,9.4-5; 715.11-16; see war
endurance pp.ll, 28-29; 57.6,13.11ff,

22.2-5; 618.19-32
Epicureanism/Epicureans pp.9,12, 23
n.81, 29 n.Ill; 28.60; 317.2-3,
18.3, 20.15, 25.15; 520.14-15;
624.13; 712.30; see Index of
Proper Names under Epicurus
equality (aequabilitas) p.39; 514.15-
20; see fairness (aequitas)
equestrians 514.18n
eschatology pp.7,12,14, 36 n.140, 45-
46, 50 n.203; 714ff
ethics pp.9, 25, 27; 313.6-7
euergetism 611.22ff, 12.19-20, 39-40
euhemerism 111.33-15.33; 519.15
evil pp.10-12, 25-27; 28.6a-6i, 17.1; 7
4.11-15, 23-24, 27a-q, 15.7-9,
16,17; see devil, dualism, good
evocatio 27.11

exposure, of children pp.ll, 37; 59.15;
620.18-25

fairness (aequitas) pp.10, 30-31, 36; 5
6.4,14, 9-11,15-20; in Plato
3.21; see charity, humanity,
justice

fall, of man pp.8, 20; 212.17-20; of
Rome 715.11,16.1,25.6-8
fate 111.13-14; 27.11,16,15.6,

16.11; 38.18; 510.12-13
father pp.9,10, 32, 51; 43.16-18
female/woman 18.7-8,11.26-27,

16.4-17; 212.1; 58.7; 623.23-
26; suffering persecution 513.3,
12,19.14; in Plato 321-22; as
philosophers 325.5-7,12,15
Fetiales 69.4; and see empire
fire 111.16,12.5-7; 26.2, 9.10,16,
18-27,12.4-6,14; 518.16; 7
9.13-14, 21.3-7
flamen 519.10

flood 210.9-11,23-24; 13.1-3; 6
10.19

fools/folly pp.10-11, 32-34; 514-18; 6
7.2; see wisdom

INDEX OF TOPICS

455

fortune, see fate

free will 28.4; and see freedom, of
religion

freedom pp.9-10; 423.3ff, 24.7; 6

6.17; 715.16; of religion pp. 11,
46-48; 519-20
frugality 63.8,17.15-20

games 120.10; 611.22,12.19, 20.6-
36; see circus, spectacles, theatre
generosity 66.10,11, 21,11.27n; and
see charity, euergetism, pity,
gladiators 519.30-31; 620.10ff
God, Christian nameless p.16; 16.4-5;
one not many pp.7-8,16, 30; 1
3; 43.13-22. 4.1-2, 7-10;
eternal 28.44; 412.16; 72.6;
without sex 18.5; perfect 13.7,
11, 23; 72.6; impassible 13.23;
28.44; anger of pp.50-51; 2
17.2, 4-5; 5.22.12-13; 726.1-3;
as father (of Christ) 28.3, 5; 4
29; as father (of mankind)
pp.24-25,46, 52-53; 111.42; 3
9.19; 429.14-15; 56.12, 8.11,
22.13; 75.5-6, 27; as lord p.16;
61.1; as lord/master and father
17.3ff; 43.14-4.11; 518.14-16;
624.3ff; as creator pp.20, 24,
27-28 n.106, 30, 39; 28-13; as
ruler of the world 58.5; 68.12;
727.9,15; worshipped in golden
age pp.30, 36-37, 52; 55.3, 8.4;
mankind created to worship God
39.13-14; cf. 61.2; what is due
to God 69; as teacher pp.41, 46-
47; 11.19; as judge pp.ll, 50-
51; 11.15; 523; 624.20; 727.2;
forgiveness of 624; as general
p.47; 522.17; 727.15; as
general and master 68.12
gods, pagan pp.7, 8,12-14,17, 29; 1
passim; 25-6; as men pp.7-8; 1
8-22; 22.2, 7.7; 428.15-16; 5

19.15-19; 62.9; 714.1; and see
Index of Proper Names under
Ennius, Euhemerus; gender of
116.4-17; scandalous behaviour
of 510.15-18; images of 24.13-
20; cults as source of all evils 5
8; numbers of 17.7; see
euhemerism; religion, pagan;
worship, Index of Proper Names
under Aesculapius, Apollo,
Bacchus, Castor and Pollux,
Ceres, Flora, Great M other,

FI ercules, J uno, J upiter, M ercury,
M inerva, Neptune, Pluto,
Proserpina, Saturn, Uranus,
Venus, Vesta, Vulcan, Zeus
golden age pp.10, 36-40, 41, 42, 44; 1
11.50,13.11-12; 412.21; 55-7,
8.1-3, 8-9; 72.1, 24
good 28.5 ; 57.5-10; 66.1ff, 14.5ff;
good and evil 517.31; 717ff;
supreme (summum bonum) pp.9,
25-26; 37.6-13.1; 41.3; 66.4;
75.18-19, 8.1-2; see dualism,
evil, knowledge, virtue
governor p.2; 111.64n; 216.7-8; 4
18.4n; 511.15,13.17; 64.22
grammarians 325.10
greed pp.ll, 30, 37, 38, 39; 55.8, 6.1-
3; 616.10-11,17.10-12,19.4ff

happiness pp.25-29, 52; 38.29,12.12-
17, 24-36; 75.27, 27j; see good,
supreme, heaven, immortality
heaven 212.3-14,18.4ff; 61.10; book
7passim; see happiness,
immortality, paths of life
Hebrews 213.8; 47.7,10.5-18, 26.37,
38; 715.1; see Jews
heresy pp.3,17, 54; 430.1, 8-14
history/historians p.19; 18.8,11.33; 2
10.9; 45.8; 54.6; 722.2
homosexuality 623.8ff
hospitality 612.5-14

456

INDEX OF TOPICS

humanity 39.19, 23.9-10; 56.4; 610-
13; see charity, generosity, pity
humility 416.13-17, 26.30; 515.10; 6
4.11

images 111.5,15.4,15,18, 27,17.5,
20.11, 37; 22-4, 6.6,10.12-14,

16.3- 4,17.6ff, 18.2ff; 613.13-
14; 719.9.

immortality pp.9,12,14, 25-26, 29,

34; 313.1,18.1-4,19.1ff; 5

18.1- 4, 9-11; 73-13, 20.7-11;
see soul, virtue

imperialism,Athenian 514.4n; Roman,
see empire, Fetiales
incarnation 412-13
infanticide 620.18-20; see exposure
innocence pp.11-12, 34, 37-38; 57.7,
14.18n, 17.18, 21-24, 22.5-6; 6
1.4,18.12ff

institutes pp.13-14 n.32; 11.12; 54.3

J ews pp.3,17, 54; 42.4-5, 5, 8, 7.4-7,
10.5-11.16; 12.13,14.10-12,

15.1- 2,12-14,16.12-13, 17,

18.3- 6,20-33, 19.1, 20,21.5,
26.37-42; 53.4,17-19, 9.9,
22.14; 7.1.24-25; see Hebrews,
revolts, Jewish, Sabbath

judgement, in underworld 320.17; 7
22.5; last 217.1-2; 71.23-25,
14.3ff, 20-21,24.1-5,26
judges pp.50-51; 55.11, 9.17; see
Index of Proper Names under
Hi erodes

jurists p.2; 11.12; 511.18-12.1
justice pp.7,9,10-12,24-25, 29-35,
37-38,39,40-42,44-45,51-53;
39.15-19; 21-22; 412.15,13.1,9;
56.4, 6,11-13, 7.1-3, 5-6, 10,
and 5passim; civil, 42.15; 5
16.12-13; 618.35, see law, civil;
natural 516.12-13; heavenly 2
12.14; 39.15,19; 514.7-15.1,

6; 69.7,18.35, 25.7; 71.3;
see law, divine; works of justice
6passim; 414.16-20, 25.6ff.;
see golden age, I ndex of P roper
Names under Carneades

king/kingship pp.32, 42-43; 13.5-6,
11.30ff, 15.Iff; of God 210.2; 7
14ff

knowledge p.26; 33-6, 8.24-31,
12.27-30; of good and evil 2
12.7-18; 55.13,17.31; 65.10-
12; of God 69; see wisdom

Lactantius, life pp.1-3; 52.2; as

Christian apologist4,12-14; as
ethical thinker 6, 25-35; as
historian of religion p.41; as
millenarianist p.45; as social and
political thinker 29-51; as
teacher of rhetoric 1, 4; 313.12;
as theologian p.4; on
Constantine 3, 48-50; on the
Tetrarchy 43-48; on the
Principate 48-49; on old Rome
40-43; works: Divine Institutes,
contents 7-12; genre 12-14;
authorities 14-21; other works 3,
49-51

law, pp.33, 37-38, 41, 45, 50-51; civil
pp.9,10-11,33, 37-38, 41,48
n.195, 53; 11.12; 429.7; 5
11.18-19; 69.4-7, 23.24-25;
divine pp.38, 45 n.181-2; 410; 5
8.8-10; 68.6-12, 9, 23.21-25,
24.25-27; natural pp.33, 46
n.186; 43.18; 516.3, see justice,
natural; of three children, 1
16.10; see justice
lawyers, see advocates, jurists
lex Papia Poppaea 116.10
lust pp.11,32; 616.9-11, 19.4-6,23
lying 618.4-6

INDEX OF TOPICS

457

magic 214.10,16.1,4; 415.4,19; 5
3.7-21, 9.17; see Christ,
miracles of

marriage 111.26,16.lOn; 321-22; 6
23.23-29

martyrs, martyrdom pp.29, 42; 421.5;
53.3,13.2, 5,11-20,19.24,
22.18-24; see persecution
milk 110.2, 22.19; 211.2, 7; 417.19; 5
4.6, 5.7; 724.7,11,13, 14
millennium 714 ff; and see
eschatology, golden age
miracles, see magic, Christ
murder pp.ll, 34, 38; 110.4; 26.3; 5
11.18; 620.10-11,15, 26; see
suicide

nature 328.3-5; see law, natural;

philosophers, natural
necromancy 216.1; 427.18-19; 713.7

opinion p.20; 38.29; 722.3; public
pp.14-15; 119.5-6; 22.6,16.4;
518.1,19.19

oracles pp.8,15-21; 27.7,16.1,13-14;
713; see also prophets, Index of
Proper Names under Apollo,
Hystaspes, Sibyl

orators, oratory 11.8-11; 325.11; 5
1.10, 24, 2.2,14.4; see rhetoric

panegyrics 115.13
parricide 115.29; 314.9; 59.16
passions 424.17; see emotions,
pleasures

paths, of life 63-4, 7-8
paterfamilias 43.16-17; see father
patience, see endurance
patria potestas, see father, power
patronage 611.26-27
peace 113.12-13,18.17; 522.15-16;
see war

penitence 624.1-10
Peripatetics p.ll, 32; 28.48; 37.7,

8.10, 16; 615.2, 17,16.1,17.9,
19.1

persecution pp. 2-3,11, 43-48; 418.2;
51.24n, 9.1-14,11-13,19.1, 6-

9, 22-23, 20.1, 7-8,12, 21.1-6,
22.18-24, 23.1; 624.1n

philosophers, philosophy pp.2, 7-9,12,
14-15, 16,19, 21-27, 32-34,
51-52; 11.9,17-18, 2, 5.15-28;
21.2-4; 3passim; 423.8-9; 51.

10, 2.3-11,14.3-16.1; 65.1,10.

6.1, 5-9, 23-28, 9.13,10.11-13,

12.1, 14,15.2, 3, 5,10-12,14-

17.16.1- 6,17.1, 9, 15.18, 24,

18.1, 3; 72.2-3, 3.1-7,11-26,

5.1- 2, 7; natural philosophers 3
6.5, 6,17, 20,13.6; see Cynics,
Cyrenaics, Epicureans, Peripa¬
tetics, Pythagoreans, Stoics; and
Index of Proper Names under

A naxagoras, A naxi menes,
Antisthenes, Arcesilaus,

A ristippus, A risto, A ristotle,
Aristoxenus, Callipho,
Chrysippus, Cicero, Cleanthes,
Critolaus, Democritus, Diagoras,
Dicaearchus, Dinomachus, Dio¬
dorus, Diogenes, Empedocles,
Epicurus, Euclides, Heraclides,
Heraclitus, Herillus, Leucippus,
Panaetius, Philodemus, Plato,
Porphyry, Protagoras, Pythagoras,
Seneca, Socrates, Speusippus,
Thales, Theombrotus,
Theophrastus, Xenophanes,

Zeno of Citium, Zeno of Sidon
piety pp.10, 24-25, 30; 39.19; 56.10,
7.2, 7,10.1-14,14.9-14, 22.8; 6
9.24,10.3,12.25; and see justice
pirates 111.32

pity pp.30-32; 323.8-10; 56.4; 610.2,

14.1- 2; and see charity
pleasures p.32; 21.3; 38.5-26,11.6,

11-12,14; 16.5; 17.38,42; aural

458

INDEX OF TOPICS

621; ocular 620, of taste and
smell 622; of touch 623
poets/poetry pp.7-8,14-15,19-20; 1

5.2- 14,11.17-38, 53-4,15.13,
21.27,29, 22.20; 210.9, 12; 4
12.21; 51.10, 5.1-8, 6.11, 10.2-
9,18.3; 722.1-4; and see Index
of Proper Names under Ennius,
Germanicus, Hesiod, Homer,
Horace, Lucan, Lucilius, Lucre¬
tius, Orpheus, Ovid, Persius,
Pindar, Plautus, Terence, Varro
(P. Terentius Atacinus), Vergil

pontiffs 519.10

poverty/the poor pp.23, 39; 514.18-19,
15.1-5,16.8; 64.11, 9.20,12,
18.10, 20.24-25; see charity
power, divine 13.1-15; of Roman
father 43.16-18

priests, pagan, see augurs, flamens,
pontiffs

property, private pp.9,11, 22-23, 38-40;

321.2- 3,22.3-4, 6-7; 55.7-8
prophecy/prophets pp.7-9,15-21; 14-

5.1; 210.11; 45.3-10,11.1-10,
12.3-21, 13.6-10,18-27,14.1-

17.15.4.13- 14,16.6-11,13-16,

17.2- 13,16,18.1,13-33,19.3-
4, 8-9, 20.5-13; 51.15, 3.18,
11.1,18.3; 77.8,13.2, 17.1-8;
see oracles

prostitute/prostitution 120.2ff; 3

15.15-19, 21.4; 620.21-22, 23.7
providence 12; 28.48-71,10.15-16,

11.13- 14; 323.9-10, 28.5; 5
22.11; 73.25-4.1, 9.11-12

prudence 512.11; see wisdom
punishment, eternal 720-21
Pythagoreans 28.48; 318.1; 517.22;
see Index of Proper Names
under Pythagoras

quindecimvirs 16.7,13-14

ransoming of captives 612.15-16
religion, etymology of 428.3-5; pagan
religions pp.7, 23, 40-41;
lpassim, and see gods, worship;
Christian religion pp.4, 7-9, 26,
30, 46-47; 4passim, and see
Christ, Christians, God;

Christian and pagan compared
519.27-34; freedom of pp.46-
48; 519-20; religion and
wisdom pp.21-25; 11.25; 42.6-
5.1,10.4; 51.11, 4.8
republicanism p.42; 66.17
rescripts, of emperors p.45; 511.19;
see law

resurrection, of Christ 419; of humans
720,22-23,26.1-7
revolts, Jewish 421.5n
rhetoric, pp.1-6, 7,14; see eloquence,
oratory

Rome, see fall; Index of Proper Names
under Rome

Romans, old pp. 40-43; 513.13,14.9-
10; see citizens, empire; Index of
Proper Names under Cato,

Decii, M ucius, Regulus,

Romulus

ruler-worship 115.28-33; see gods, as
men

Sabbath 714.8

sacrifice 513.1, 8,19.10, 27-34, 20.3-
8; 61-2, 25

sages, the seven 15.16; 28.49; 41.9; 6
6.27

scripture pp.14-16, 20-21; 211.15; 3
1.10-12; 45.9-10, 20.1-5; 5
1.15-21, 2.13-16, 3.1-3, 4.4-7;
624.31; 725.1-2; see prophets,
and Index of Proper Names
under Baruch, I Corinthians,
Daniel, Deuteronomy, Eccle¬
siastes, Ephesians, Ezekiel, etc.
senate, senators pp.8, 40-41; 115.32,

INDEX OF TOPICS

459

20.7,13,22.6-8; 26.14-16; 5
14.18n; of the gods 110.8
sex, see lust

slaves/slavery pp.33, 34, 39; 43.16-18,

4.1- 5; 56.2,14.17,15.2-3,
18.14-15; slaves as philosophers

325.15- 16

soldiery, as profession pp.38, 51; 6
20.16

soul 22.6, 10.2,12.3, 7-14; 36.3,

12.2, 34,13.16; 521.11; 61.10,
2.13,14.2; 75.9-10,13,15-19,
23-25, 27a-l, 11-12, 23; see
body, immortality, necromancy,
transmigration.

spectacles 620.32-36; see games
spirit, see soul

Stoics/Stoicism pp.8, 9,11,14,18,19
n.69, 27, 29 n.lll, 32; 12.2-3,

5.19- 21, 6.2,12.3-10,17.1-2;
25.7-9, 19,28-42,8.23, 48,

10.15- 16; 34.1-2, 6.7, 7.8, 8.10,

12.12.18.1- 5,11, 23.8-10,14,

25.7, 27.4, 6; 65.4,14.7-9,15.3,
17.9-17,19.1; 73.Iff, llff, 4.2,
7.9, 20.8-9, 23.3; see Index of
Proper Names under Cleanthes,
Chrysippus, Panaetius, Seneca,
Zeno of Citium

suicide pp.42, 50; 15.26n; 318.5-12;
617.25

summum bonum, see good, supreme
superstition 11.12, 23,15.18, 22.1; 2
9.11; 428.3-7,13-16; 51.1,

2.7, 13.3

toleration, see freedom

theatre 520.12-13; 620.27-31, 21.2

trade 517.12-13

transmigration, of the soul 318.1-3,

19.19- 20

triumph 110.8,11.2

tyranny pp.28, 37-38, 42, 45; 24.16ff,
27ff; 56.5-6, 12.1; 718.5-19.7
TwelveTables p.41; 69.6

usury 618.7-9

vegetarianism 624.14n
virgin birth, see incarnation
virtue pp.11-12, 25-35, 37, 41-42, 46,
52, 53; 13.4, 7,9.1,18.3-4; 3
8.31-42,11-12; 424.7,19,

29.5- 6; 518.4-11; 65-6, 9.8-
11,16ff; 71.17, 5.15,10; of God
13.1,8.2,11.43; of Christ 46.9,
23-25; interdependence of virtue
and vice pp.27-28 n.106, 40; 2
17.Iff; 329.16ff; 57.4-10; 6
3.12ff, 5.11-13, 22.2ff; 71.17-
18, 5.27a-q; immortality as
reward for p.29; 312.7-36; 4

25.5- 10; 518.1-11; 69.17-24;
71.3, 5.9-27; and see inno¬
cence, justice, patience, piety

war pp.30, 34, 37, 41, 45, 50, 51; 58.6,
10.10,17.12-13, 20, 22.17; 6
4.15ff; 7.27.15; see empire
widows 612.23

wisdom pp.7,12, 21-27, 34-37, 52;
11.6, 23.8-9; 23.23-24, 7.1-6,
8.71; 3passim, esp. 1.9-10, 6.1-
2, 8.31, 9.1, 6-8,11.2-3, 16.10,
26.1; 4passim; 517.33-34;
69.24; 74.13; see philosophy,
religion and wisdom
world, creation of 71-4, 7.8-13; end
of, see eschatology; worldly
ambition 64.21-22; 71.15
worship, of gods lpassim; 21-4, 6; of
God 6passim; 76; and see
religion

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

U nderlining of references indicates that text is quoted, directly or indirectly.

In addition to names in L.'s text, names mentioned in the footnotes are also refer¬
enced when it seems significant.

Books of the Bible are printed in italics; virtually no other works are listed separately.

Academy, Academics pp.9, 23-24, 34,
44; 12.3,6.2,12n; 28.14; 3
3.7,4.11, 6.5,8, 20,7.10,14.14,
15,15.3,28.17; 514.3; 75.2,
7.2,3

Acestes 122.25
Achilles 123.3
Adonis 117.9
Aeacus 320.17n; 722.5
Aegean sea 111.59
Aelius, Sextus 68.8
Aeneas pp.30, 31n.l22, 37, 40; 1
17.9,22.25; 510.3-9
Aesculapius/Asclepius p.8; 110.1,
15.5, 23, 26,17.15, 18.1, 21, 25;
24.18,7.13,17,15.7,8; 320.16,
17; 427.12; 625.10,11; 718.4
Africa (North) pp.l, 2, 3,17, 53
Africanus, P.Cornelius Scipio 19.1,
18.11-13

Agamemnon 123.3

Agathocles, king of Sicily 121.13,15

Agesilaus, see Pluto

Aglaosthene 111.64

Agrarian law 323.7n

Ajax 123.3

Albinus 65.3

Albunea 16.12

Alcibiades 319.24

Alcmena 19.1

Alexander the Great 16.8; 27.19
Alexander I, king of M acedon 414.11

Amalek 417.12

Amalthea 16.10,21.38,22.19

Amazons 19.2,5

Ambracia 318.9

Ambrose pp.4, 35nn.l38 & 139

Amos 419.3

Amphitryo 110.11,15.20
A nacharsis the Scythian 325.18
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae,

philosopher 15.18; 39.4,15,
18,12.20, 23.11n, 28.12, 30.6; 5
3.23; 61.2

Anaximenes of M iletus, philosopher 1
5.19

Anchises 115.12,17.9; 510.8
Ancyra 16.12
Anio, river 16.12
Anniceris 325.16

Anthropians (Christian sect) 430.10
Antichrist 719.6

Antisthenes, philosopher 15.18; 3
15.20n

Antonius, M ., the elder 111.32
Antonius, M ., triumvir p.42; ll.lln,
11.32n, 15.29-30, 22.11n; 2
7.17; 314.12n; 618.28n
Apis 410.12

Apollo pp.16,19; 17.1-2, 8-9,10,

13, 8.4,10.1, 3,15.9,13, 26; 2
4.18; 44.8,13.11-15,17,15.6,
27.12,14,18; 53.5,10.16;
713.5, 6, 22.5

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

461

Apollodorus 16.9

Apollonius of Tyana pp.2,15; 53.7-
10,14,16, 21
Appius 618.26

Appius Claudius, Censor 27.15,16.11
Apuleius 53.7, 21
Arabia 213.6

Aratus 111.64n; 21.28n; 55.4
A rcesilaus, philosopher 34.11-14, 5.3,
5, 8,6.7-10,30.6
A rchimedes, scientist 25.18
Areopagus 53.6
Argonauts 15.4,9.10,22.17
Argus 16.2
Ariadne 110.9n
A rician wood 117.15, 22.2
A ristarchus of Samothrace 52.17
Aristides,Athenian 319.8
A ristides, Christian apologist p.12
A ristippus, philosopher 37.7,8.6,
15.15; 77.11
Aristo, philosopher 77.11
Aristophanes of Byzantium 52.17
Aristotle 15.22, 6.12n; 210.17,25; 3
7.8, 8.38,17.34n, 28.20, 21; 5
3.1,14.5,17.4; 616.6n; 71.7
Aristoxenus, philosopher 713.9,10
Arnobius pp.l, 19, 51n.206; 111.13n;
51.21n

A rtorius, doctor 27.22
Asclepiades p.3; 74. 17-18
Asclepius, see Aesculapius
Asia 715.11,16.3
Asia M inor p.2; 17.1
Assyria,Assyrians 123.2; 715
Ataburus 122.23
Athenagoras p.12

Athens/Athenians 110.4,15.9, 20.3-4;
312.22,19.17,22,23,20.16; 5
14.3; 68.9,9.8

Atinius,Tiberius 27.20-21,16.11
Atlas 111.58

A tticus, T. Pomponius 115.26,20.14
328.9n

Attus Navius, augur 27.8
Augustine pp.4-6,17n.54,18, 22, 26,
35, 49n.197, 51, 53; 24.10n,
13n, 15.7n; 318.5n, 24.1n; 6
15.lOn, 16.11n, 20.27n; 7
lO.lOn, 15.11n

Augustus, emperor p.43; 111.64n,
16.10n, 20.5n; 27.22
Aulacia 111.65
A uses 417.12
Autolycus 123.2
Autronius M aximus 27.20
Aventinus 111.59

Babylon/Babylonians 16.13,23.2; 4
5.7,10.17

Bacchus 18.4,10.8-9,15.5,9,13,23,
26, 18.1,18, 21.28, 22.15; 2
13.4; 43.12,4.8; 510.16; 6
20.35; 722.5.13
Bacis p.17

Baebius, consul in 181 BC 122.5
Baruch 413.8

B el Iona p.41; 121.16; 510.15
Bel us 123.2

Bibaculus, see Furius Bibaculus
Bithynia pp.2, 3; 52.2,11.15
Boeotia 122.15

BonaDea 110.14n, 22.11; 320.4
Brutus, M ., expeller of the kings 7
15.16

Brutus, M ., assassin of Caesar
p.42n,170; 27.22
Butes 117.9

Cabirus 115.8
Caca 120.36
Cadmus 115.20

Caelus 112.10,13.14,18.18; 44.8
Caesar, C. Julius p.42; 16.7,15.29-
30, 21.3n; 27.17,16.11; 318.5n,
11-12; 611.25n, 18.34, 35
Caesar, L. J ulius, uncle of the above 1
15.30

462

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Caesars 115.6
Callipho, philosopher 37.7
Canaan/Canaanites 213.6
Cannae 216.16

Capitol 16.11,12,14,11.49,20.27,
38,40; 314.10,17.12,14
Carneades pp.10, 32-35, 44, 53; 3
30.6; 514.3-5,16.2-12,17.1,9,
14, 20, 32

Carthage/Carthaginians pp.l, 29; 1
15.8,21.13; 216.18; 715.14,

Cassiodorus p.l3n.32
Cassius Hemina, annalist 113.8 and n
Castor and Pollux 15.4,10.5-6,15.5,
23,26; 27.9,10

Catiline, L. Sergius Catilina 319.8
Catina, in Sicily 24.28
Cato, M . Porcius, Censor 316.5n; 5
14.3

Cato, M . Porcius, the younger pp.41,
42; 318.5,8,10-12,19.8; 6
6.27

Catulus, Q. Lutatius, (in Cic. Hort.) 6
2.15

Caucasus 210.7; 511.4,17.18
Cecrops 117.14
Celsus p.15,17

Ceres 114.2,17.6,18.1,18,21.24; 2
4.28-30, 7.19,16.11; 320.4
Chaldeans 413.11; 714.4
Chiron 110.2
Chloris 120.8

C hrist (see also J esus) pp.5, 7, 9-10,

14.15.18, 24, 29, 46, 54; 47.4,
7, 8.1,10.2,18,19,12.14,17,

18.13.9.18, 14.1, 3,15.27, 30,
16.4,12,14,17.1, 10,11,12,13,
18.1-9, 31, 20.3-5, 10, 23.10,

26.2, 3, 28, 39, 27.1,14,19,
29.11,30.10; 53.4,7,9,10; 7
19.4,6

Christians 430.10,13; 52.4,13,
11.13,13.8; 726.8

Chronos 112.9

Chrysippus, philosopher p.27n,105;

12.2n, 5.20, 6.9; 37.8n, 18.5;
723.3

Chthon 117.13

Cicero, M .Tullius pp.4, 8, 9,11,13,
14-15,17,19, 20, 21, 22, 23,
26-27,31,32-33,34,35-36,42,

44, 49, 51, 53; ll.lln, 12n,

2.3, 3.22n, 5.24, 25, 6.2J, 7.4,
9.3-4,10.2,14,11.40, 48,12.3-
4, 9-10, 15.5, 6,16-18, 19-20.
21,23^5,27,17.1,2, 3-4,18.13,
20.14,16,17, 19, 22, 21.28n; 2
3.2-7, 24,4.27,31, 33-37,5.7,

8, 9, 6.8, 8. 10-11. 12-16, 20, 25,

45, 46, 53, 60, 65, 9.12,10.15,
11.15-16; 31.1. 8.32.10.7-8.
13. 10-11, 13,14,15,16,14.7, 8,
9,11,13,15,17,20,15.1, 9, 10,

16.2, 5, 6, 9, 12-13 . 1713, 14,

18.12.18.19.2, 5-6,14, 25.1,2,
12, 27.5n, 28.9, 12n, 20, 29.3, 4,
6, 7,18; 44.6, 15.27,18.10,

28.3, 445,10; 55.5,9,6.12,

8.6.10, 11.2,12. 5-6. 14.3, 5,15,
16.5-7. 9-11 .13,18.4, 6, 7, 8,

20.3, 22.7; 62.15, 4.11n, 5.4, 5,
6.21, 24, 25, 26, 8.6, M, 11,

11.2, 9,10, U, 12,13,14, 25,
12.5, 9,10,11,13,15,19,17.27,
18.15, 21, 24, 27, 34, 20.4-5.

24.2,18,19, 20, 29, 25.9; 71.1,

2.10, 4.U, 15, 8.7, 9, 9.10, 10.9,
10,11.5,14.4, 22.19n, 23.3

Cimmeria 16.9; 523.3

Cimon, Athenian pp.40n.156, 49; 69.8

Circe 121.23

Circus 27.20; 620.32,35

Cithaeron 122.15

Claudia 27.12,16.11

Cleanthes 15.19; 318.5

Clement of Alexandria p.12

Clinic philosophers 38.10 and n

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

463

Cloacina 120.11
Clodius, P. 110.14
Clodius, Sextus, historian 122.11
Cnossos 111.46
Codrus, king of Athens 312.22
Colophon, in Asia M inor 17.1
Constantine, emperor pp.3-4,18, 36,
43,48-51; 11.13,14n; 21.2;
31.1; 41.1; 51.1; 63.1; 7
26.10a

Constantius, father of Constantine 1
1.13n

1 Corinthians 515.8; 623.15; 75.22
Cornelius, consul in 181 BC 122.5
Cornelius (in Cic. Hort.) 62.15
Cornelius Nepos, see Nepos
Corybantes 113.5,21.40
Corythus 123.3
Cos 27.17

Cotta, C. Aurelius (in Cic. N.D.) 16.2;
26.8,8.55

Crassus, M . Licinius 613.11
Crete/Cretans 110.9,11.46-8,13.3,
14.10, 21.38-41, 22.19
Crispus, son of Constantine pp.3, 48
Critias 319.24

Critolaus, philosopher 330.6n
Croesus, king of Lydia 613.11
Cronos/Kronos 111.46,12.9,13.1,11
Cumae in Italy p.17; 16.10,13; 7
24.12

Cunina 120.36
Cupid(s) 111.1-3,17.9,20.14
Curetes 111.46,13.5n, 21.40-42
Curio, C. Scribonius 16.14
Curtius 312.22
Cynics 315.20,18.9n
Cynosura 110.2

Cyprian pp.l, 4-5,13,16, 28; 51.24,
26, 4.3, 5, 7; 612.32n, 24.1n
Cyprus 117.10,21.1
Cyrenaics 38.9,15.15
Cyrus the Great of Persia 16.12; 4
5.7,10.17,11.5

Danae 111.18

Daniel 412.12, 21.1; 724.2n
Dardanus 123.3

Darius, king of Persia 45.8,14.11
David 48.13,14,11.9,12.7,17,13.9,
18, 21,22,24-27,14.1,4,15.3,
16.6,14,18.14,18, 26, 30, 31,

32, 19.8
Decii 312.22
Delos 115.9

Delphi 16.7,9,7.1; 427.14
Demetrianus, correspondent of Cyprian
54.3, 4, 6

Demetrianus, pupil of Lactantius p.3; 2
10.15

Democritus, philosopher p.23; 11.4n,
2.2; 317.23,34,18.6,23.4,
28.13,30.6; 71.10,3.23,7.9,

10, 12, 8.8, 13.7
Demophile, see Herophile
Demosthenes, Athenian orator 3
14.12n; 52.15
Deucalion 210.10, 23
Deuteronomy 417.6, 9,18.29
Diagoras, philosopher 12.2
Diana 117.15n, 21.2
Dicaearchus, philosopher 317.34; 7
7.12, 8.8,13.7

Didymus, commentator 122. 19-20, 27
Diespiter 114.5
Dinomachus, philosopher 37.7
Diocletian, emperor pp.2, 4, 36, 44; 1
1.13n, 9.In

Diodorus, historian 113.8
Diodorus, philosopher 37.7
Diogenes, philosopher 325.16, 30.6n
Dionysius I of Syracuse 24.16-20,
25-26,27, 35

Dolabella, P. Cornelius, Cicero's son-
in-law 115.30

Domitian, emperor p.49; 53.9
Domitius U Ipianus, jurist pp,13n, 45;
511.19

464

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Ecclesiasticus 48.15

Egeria 117.15,22.1-2

Egypt, Egyptians pp.5,16,42; 16.2,

3, 11.20,15.8, 20.36, 21.20, 24;
25.36,12.22,13.10; 320.16; 4

2.4, 10.5-8,11, 13.7, 20.6,
26.37,38; 520.12; 66.17; 7
13.4,15.1-6,10,13

Eleusis 121.24
Elijah 411.6
Elysian Fields 64.1
Emmanuel 412.4, 6-7
Empedocles, philosopher 212.4; 3
18.5,28.12,30.6

Ennius pp.5,8; 111.34,35, 45-46,

63, 64, £5,13.2,14,14.1, 2^6, 7,
10-12. 15.31,17.10,18.11,12,
22.21; 51.5

Ephesians 618.33; 75.22
Ephesus 53.14

Epicureans pp.12, 23n.81, 29n.lll; 2
8.60; 317.2,3,18.3,20.15,
25.15; 520.14; 624.13; 7
12.27,30

Epicurus, philosopher p.9; 12.2; 2
8.49,10.25; 37.7,12.15, 17.7,
16. 17-25 . 28-30, 31, 32-35,
41-42, 25.7,13, 27.5, 6; 53.1,
10.12; 71.10, 3.13, 23, 24, 5.4,
7, 8, 7.13, 8.8,13.7
Epidaurus 110.2; 27.13,16.11
Epimenides p.17

Eratosthenes of Cyrene, scientist 16.9
Erichthonius 117.11,13
Eris 117.13

E rythrae/E rythrean 16.9,11,13,14-
15,8.3,14.8; 212.19,16.1; 4

6.5, 15.27, 29; 513.21; 719.9,
20.1, 24.12

Eryx 117.9

Esdras/Esdras 411.5,18.22
Esus and Teutates 121.3
Ethiopians 413.7
Etna 121.24; 318.5

Euclides of M egara, philosopher 312.9
Euhemerus pp.8,15n; 111.33,65,
13.14, 22.27

Euphranor, sculptor 24.13
Euphorbus 318.15; 723.2
Euripides 16.8; 515.11
Europa 111.19,21
Eurystheus 19.7

Eusebius, of Caesarea pp.3, 37n.l41,
43, 49

Eusebius, sophist pp.2-3
Ezekiel 726.2n, 4n

Fabricius 66.26
Faenia 16.3
Fatua 122.9
Faula 120.5

Faunus 115.8, 22.9,11,12,13,16,17

Faustulus 120.2

Febris, Roman cult of 120.17n

Fenestella, historian 16.14

Fenta Fauna 122.9-11

Fetials, Roman priests p.41; 69.4

Flora 120.6-7

Floralia 120.6-7

Florentinus, jurist p,13n.32

Fornacalia 120.35

Fornax 120.35

Fortuna 27.11,16,16.11; 510.13
Fulvius, M ., Censor 27.16
Furius Bibaculus 121.47-48
Furius (L. Furius Philus) (in Cic. Rep.)
pp.33,44; 512.5,7,9,14.5,
16.13,17.2,14,18.9
Fuscus, Aristius 517.18

P. Gabinius 16.14
Galba, Ser. Sulpicius 514.3
Galilee 419.7, 20.1
Galii (priests) 117.7; 59.17
Ganymede 110.12 and n, 11.19, 22,
29,23.3; 216.17
Gauls 120.27,33,21.3
Gavius in Cic. Ver. 5 418.10-11

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

465

GaviusBassus 122.9
Gemini, consuls 410.18
Genesis 210.3; 55.13
Gentiles 213.12; 411.8, 9,12.14,15,
15.2

Gergithium 16.12
Germanicus,Ti. Claudius 111.64,
21.28n, 38; 55.4,9
Glauce 114.5
Gracchi 24.29

Great Mother 117.7n, 21.16, 25,

22.20; 59.17

Greece, Greeks pp.6,10,12,17, 22,

31, 39, 52; 11.9, 6.7, 9,11,

10.6,11.59,13.8,15.14,15, 24-
25,18.7, 20.14,16,17, 21.28,

31, 22.15; 21.16, 4.16, 8.6, 6g;
314.7,16.16, 19.17; 41.12, 5.8,
7.7,9.1,25.5; 514.19; 624.6;
715.13

Hadrian, emperor 121.1
Ham, son of Noah 213.5-6
Hanging Gardens 324.1
Hannibal 216.17
Harmonia 117.9
Hebrews 213.8; 47.7,10.5-18,
26.37,38; 715.1
Helen 110.6
Helicon 15.10

Hellespont 16.12,11.59; 24.4
Henna, in Sicily 24.28, 29
Heraclides of Pontus, philosopher 1
6.12

Heraclitus, philosopher p.17; 29.18
Hercules pp.8,44; 15.4,8.4,9.1-4,7,
10-11,15.5, 23, 26,18.1, 3-6,
13,20.5,36,21.8,31-37; 2
7.15,16.11; 53.14,10.16
Herillus, philosopher 37.8
Hermaphroditus 117.9
Hermes, see M ercury
HermesTrismegistus pp. 16-17,18; 1
6.2-3, 4, 7.2,11.61; 28.48,68,

10.14,12.4^5, 14.6,15.6, 8; 4
6.3, 4, 9, 7.3, 8.5, 9.3,13.2,
27.19; 514.11; 625.10,11; 7
9.11, 13.3,4,18.3,4
Hermopolis in Egypt 16.3
Herod the tetrarch 410.18,18.6
Herophile 16.10
Hesiod 15.8-10; 214.7
Hierocles, Sossianus pp.2,15; 4
15.26n; 52.12,3.4,7
Hieronymus 37.7
Hilary of Poitiers pp.4, 5
Hippolytus 110.1,17.15n
Homer 13.17, 5.8, 6.9,10.6; 47.7,
27.15, 29.11
Honorius, emperor p.17
Honour, Roman cult of 120.12
Horace 24.1; 513.16,17.18; 65.12,13
Horeb, Mt 417.4

Hortensius (in Cic. H ort.) 17.4; 3
16.9,11,12-13
Hosea/Hosea 419.9, 29.11
Hostilius, seeTullus Hostilius
Hyacinthus 110.3n
Hyperion 121.30
Hyrcania 511.4

Hydaspes, river 517.18; 715.19
Hystaspes, Persian king pp.18n.63,19;
715.lln, 19,17.In, 18.2,
21.ln.95

lapetus 210.7-8
lasius 123.3
Icariansea 111.59
Ida 121.40

Idaean M other (see also Great M other)
27.12

Ilium, seeTroy
Illyrium 27.16
Inachus 111.20, 58
India 110.8; 511.4
Ino 121.23

Institutes of Civil Law pp.13-14; 11.12
lo 111.20,21

466

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Isaiah/Isaiah p.19; 411.10, 12., 12.4,

8, 9,10, 18-19 .13.7, 10, 19, 20,
15. 13-14. 16. 15-16 . 17.8,18.13,
16. 24-25. 20.12. 29.10: 7
24.3n, 7n, 9n

Isis 111.20-21,15.8,17.6, 21.20-21
Israel 411.12,13.7,10,17.9,12,

18.32, 20.11, 29.10
Italy p.3; 16.9,11,11.55, 13.6,8,9,
17.15

lulus, son of Aeneas 510.8

Jacob 413.8,10
Janiculum 122.5
Janus 113.7; 43.12
Jeremiah/Jeremiah p.19; 48.1,11.4,
12-13,13.8,10,17.8, 18.27,
19.4, 20.5-6, 7, 9, 10, 30.1
J erome pp.l, 2n, 4, 5, 21
Jerusalem 413.24,14.7,17.3, 8,18.32
Jesse 413.19-21
Jesus (seealso Christ) 47.4,12.6,
13.16,14.6-9,11,14, 16.13,
17.10,11,13, 18.5
J esus, son of J osedech 414.12
Jews pp.3, 9,17, 54; 42.4-5, 5.7, 7.4,
6,10.18,11.1-3, 5,12,12.5,13,
13.17, 24,14.10,12,17,15.1, 2,
12, 30,16.5, 12,17.10, 21, 18.3,
4, 6, 21, 23,19.1, 20.1, 2, 5,11,
21.2, 5, 26.37, 39; 53.4,17, 19,
22.14; 71.24,26
John 48.16, 26.31; 625.12
J ohn the Baptist 415.2
J ordan, river 415.2
Joshua 45.6,14.12,17.9,12
Joshua 417.9
Juba 115.8

Judaea/Judaeans 410.14 and n, 18.4n
Judah 410.14,17.8,18.20, 20.6,10,

Judaism 417.1
Judas 419.3

J ulian the apostate, emperor p.17

Julius Caesar, see Caesar
Julius Proculus, see Proculus
Junillus,jurist p,13n
Juno 111.20, 39-40,14.4,15.9,17.7,
8; 27.11,16.11,16-18
Jupiter pp.8,10, 30, 38-40, 44; 15.7,
7.2, 8, 8.4,10.8, 10-14, 11.2, 5-
29,30, 33-49,62-65,12.10,
13.1-4,14.4-12,15.12, 13, 26,
27,16.5,10,17.7-8, 9,12-13,
20, 20.33, 37-9,21.1, 3, 9, 38-42,
22.3, 19,21-23,26-28,23.3; 2

I. 7, 4.17,5.2,7.20,10.12,16.5,

II, 16; 317.13,14; 43.12,4.8,
10, 9.2-3, 27.12, 14,15,18;
53.25, 5.9,10,12, 6.6,11,13,
10.15,16; 718.2,22.5

Justin pp.12, 22
Justinian p,13n.32
Juturna 27.9
Juvenal 329.17

1 Kings 411.6,18. 32-33
Kronos, see Cronus

Labryandus 122.23
Laelius, C. Sapiens (in Cic. Rep.)
pp.34-35; 516.13,17.2,12,
18.4,5,22.7; 66.27
Lamia, bogey 122.13
Lampsacus 121.25, 26
Laomedon, king of Troy 19.10,10.3,
22.17
Lara 120.35
Larentinalia 120.4
Larentina 120.2
Lares 120.35
Larunda 120.35
Latinus 122.17

Latins, Latium 111.59,13.9,13,15.8,
21.3,6,22.9; 27.9; 55.9
Latona 117.6
Leda 121.23
Lemnos 115.9

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

467

Lethe 318.16; 722.7

Leucippus, philosopher 12.2n; 317.23

Leucothea 121.23

Leviticus 523.3

Libanius of Antioch p.2

Liber (= Bacchus) 110.9n; 43.12

Libyans 16.8

Licinius, emperor p.50

Lindos 121.31-37

Lioness 120.34

Livy p.17; 111.49n, 20.2, 27n, 21.47n,
22.In; 27.8n, lln, 12n, 13n
Locri 27.18,16.11
Lucan p.42n; 121.20 (but see note),
21; 66.17n
Lucian 19.8

Lucilius, poet 19.8,22.13; 43.12; 5
9.20,14.3; 65.2, 3, 6.10,18.6
Lucilius (Q. Lucilius Balbus) (in Cic.

N.D.) 25.7-8,9,15,16,6.8,8.54
Lucretius 116.3, 21.14, 48; 23.10,

11.11.1, 12.4; 314.1,2,4,

16.14 and nn till 25, 34n, 17.10,
14, 28,18.6, 27.10; 428.13; 5
6.12,14.17; 610.7; 73.13,

12.1, 5, 7n, 9n, 14n, U, 18, 20,
22,24, 26, 27,29,27.6

Luke 415.3; 612.3

Manichees pp.17n.54, 27-28n. 106
M acedon, M acedonians 16.8,15.8; 2
7.10

Magi 214.10,16.4; 42.4; 713.7
M alachi/M alachi 411.8
M. Marcellus 120.12
M arcianus, jurist p,13n
M arcionites (Christian sect) 430.10
M arcus Aurelius, emperor p.43
Marica 121.23
Mark 418.4

M ark Antony, see Antonius, M ., triumvir
M armessus (sic) 16.12
Mars p.41; 110.4,15.26,17.9; 43.12;
53.6,10.15

Mater Matuta 121.23
Matthew 515.9; 612.35n, 23.32, 33,
34,24.21; 727.13n
M aximian, colleague of Diocletian
p.44; 11.13n, 9.1n
Medes 715.19
Mediterranean 111.32
Melicertes 121.23
Melissa 122.19,20
M elisseus 122.19,27,28
Melito p. 12
M emmius, C., 314.2
Menoeceus 312.22
M ercury (Roman god) 16.2,3,8.4,
10.7,11.61,15.13, 26, 17.9; 4
27.18; 510.16; 713.4,22.5
M essene/M essenians 110.2,11.33,
20.29-30
M essiah 47.7
Micah 417.3

Miletus 15.16; 27.19,16.11; 314.5;

413.11; 713.5
M ind, Roman cult of 120.13
M inerva 111.39,15.9,17.12-14,18.1,
23-24; 27.22,16.11
Minos 122.3; 320.17n; 722.5
M inucius Felix pp.l, 4n.l9,13,14; 1
11.55, 62,17.6n; 24.1n, 7.8n;
51.22,13.14n; 623.5n
Moon 121.30
Moors 115.6, 8; 517.18
Moses 14.8n; 45.6, 9n, 10.6-7,12,
13, 13.10,14.12,17.1, 4, 5-7, 9,
12, 13,18.29,20.2,10,26.40
M ucius, C. Scaevola pp.41-42; 5
13.13

M ulvian bridge 121.6
Musaeus p.17; 121.39
M uses 15.10
Muta 120.35

Naevius, historian 16.9
Nathan 413.22
Naxos 111.64,15.9

468

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Nehemiah 411.5
Nemesis 121.23

Nepos, Cornelius 113.8; 315.10
Neptune 111.30, 32, 34,14.5,15.26;
26.2; 43.12,27.18; 514.3; 6
20.35

Nero, emperor pp.17n.57, 49; 15.26n;
421.5

Nicanor 16.8
Nicomedia pp.2, 3
Nile, source of 38.29
Noah 213.1-8

Novatians (Christian sect) 430.10
Numa, Pompilius, king of Rome
pp.40-41; 122.1-5,9,13; 2

6.15

Numbers 413.10,18.29

Nun, father of Joshua 414.12,17.9

Oceania 111.65
Oedipus 620.23
Oeta 19.11

Olympus p.41; 111.35; 317.14; 5

10.15

Omphale 19.7
Ops, see Rhea
Optatus p.5
Orcus 114.5; 514.3
Origen pp.12,17
Orion 415.21
Orosius p.44n,177

Orpheus pp.17,19; 15.4,5,6,7,14,
7.7, 13.11, 21.39n, 22.15,17; 4
8.4, 5

Osiris 117.6, 21.20-22, 24
Otacilius, M., 16.14
Ovid, P. Ovidius Naso 15.13,11.In,
12.6,13.6, 7,16.12, 20.8, 35,
21.8, 9, 20 (see note), 25-6, 30,
40; 21.15, 5.1, 2, 24, 8.64,

9.20; 55.7

Palaemon 121.23
Pallas 510.5

Pan 115.13

Panaetius, philosopher 65.4
Panchaeus mountain 111.63
Panic and Paleness, Roman cult of 1
20.11

Paphos 115.9
Papian law 116.10
Paradise 212.15,16,19
Parthenia 117.8
Partheniae 120.32
Paul, apostle p.l5n.44; 421.2,5; 5
2.17, 3.1

Paul, jurist p,13n.32
Paulinus of Nola pp.4-5
Paulus (Paullus), L. Aemilius, victor of
Pydna 27.10

Paulus (Paullus), L. Aemilius, consul,
killed at Cannae 216.17
Perfect Discourse (of Hermes

Trismegistus) 215.7; 46.3; 7
18.3,4

Perillus 326.6

Peripatetics pp.11,32; 28.48; 37.7,
8.10,16; 615.2,17,16.1,17.9,
19.1

Perseus, king of M acedon 27.10
Persia, Persians 16.8; 42.4,5.7; 7
15.13

Persis 121.30

Persius, poet 22.18, 4.10, 11-12. 13;

316.15; 62.11,12
Pescennius Festus, historian 121.13
Peter, disciple p,15n; 421.2,5; 5
2.17, 3.1
Petilius 122.5
Petilius, Q. praetor 122.6
Phaedo 325.15
Phaenomena 121.28 and n
Phaenomena (attrib. to Ovid) 25.24
Phaethon 210.23
Phalaris 24.27; 319.8, 27.5
Pherecydes 77.12,8.7
Phidias 24.13

Philip, king of M acedon 314.12n

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

469

Philoctetes 19.11
Philodemus 320.15n
Phrygia 16.12; 511.10
Phrygians (Christian sect) 430.10
Picus 122.9
Pindar 122.19
Piso, historian 16.9
Piso, father-in-law of J ulius Caesar 1
15.30

Plato pp.16, 20, 25, 31, 39-40, 49; 1
5.23, 6.12n, 8.1, 15.16, 23; 2
4.26, 8.49,10.4, 25,14.6n, 9; 3
14.13,17.29, 18.8-10,19.17-21,

24.21.1.2, 4,5,6, 7,8,11,12,

22.2, 5-11, 25.1, 7,16; 42.4,
4.6; 51.14n, 3.1,14.5, 13,17.4;

617.4, 25.1, 2; 71.6, 9, 2.10,
3.12,16,7.8,12,8.2,4,7,9.1,

12.2.13.4.14.4, 22.19
Plautus, T. Maccius 512.11; 611.8
Pluto 111.30,31,14.5

Polites 713.5
Pollux, see Castor
Polyclitus, sculptor 24.13
Pompey the Great p.42; 66.17
Pompey, Sextus, son of Pompey the
Great 121.21
Pontius Pilate 418.4-6
Porphyry p.2; 52.3n
Portunus 121.23
Potitii 27.15

Priam, king of Troy 110.6, 22.17, 23.3
Priapus 121.25-30; 24.1-4
Probus, correspondent of L. p.3
Proculus,Julius p.40; 115.32
Prometheus p.8; 210.5,7-8,10-12;
721.5

Propertius 26.14

Proserpina 117.6,21.24; 27.18,16.11
Protagoras, philosopher 12.2,5.17
Proverbs p.18; 46.6-8
Psalms 48.14,11.9, 12.7,17,13.9,18,
27,14.4,15.3,16.6,14,18.14,18,
26, 30, 19^8; 59.9; 714.9,20.5

Pyrrhus 27.18

Pythagoras p.16; 15.17; 32.6,14.5,
18.15-17,19.19; 42.4; 63.6n;

78.7,12.30,13.4, 23.2
Pythagoreans 28.48; 318.1; 517.22

Quirinus 115.8,23,29,32,21.23; 4
3.12

quindecimviri 16.7,13,14
Quintilian 121.17; 57.6,7; 623.30
Quirites 26.14

Red Sea 410.7

Regulus, M . Atilius pp.29, 41-42, 49;
513.13

Remus 115.29

Revelation 710.10,17.In, 5n, 7n, 8n,
20.5n, 24.2n, 6n
Rhadamanthus 320.17; 722.5
Rhea/Ops 111.6, 27, 38,13.2-3, 7,
14.2-7,17.7n
Rhodes 121.31

Robigo, Roman cult of 120.17n
Rome/Romans pp.8,10,12,17, 29,
30,31,35-51,52,53; 11.14,
5.26, 6.11, 13,14-15,13.8, 29,
15.6, 8, 18.8, 20.1,3,4,5,17,
27,33,21.8,26,22.1,9; 24.29,
30, 7.10,11,12,13, 16,12.4,
16.11,12,16-18; 312.22,

17.12,18.8, 20.3; 45.7, 7.6,
10.5, 21.2; 513.13,14.3,10,19,
16.4,17; 68.9,9.4-6; 715.11,
13, 14,15,18,19, 16.1, 25.6, 8,
26.11

Romulus p.8, 40; 115.29,31,33,
20.1,21.23; 26.13; 715.14

Sabines 115.8, 22.1
Sages, the Seven 15.16 28.49; 41.9;
66.27

Salii 121.45, 47n, 22.4
Sallust, C. Sallustius Crispus 121.41;
212. 12-13 : 329.8,10; 618.26

470

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Samos, Samians 16.9,15.9,17.8

1 Samuel 414.5

2 Samuel 413.22
Sancus 115.8

Saturn pp.8, 30, 36-40, 44; 15.7,

10.10.11.6, 7,16-17, 27, 38, 46,
48, 50-62,12.1-2, 8-10,13.1-
15, 14.2-12,15.2,16.10,18.18,
20.37,21.6-7,9,13,22.9,28,
23.2,5; 210.8,13.4; 43.12,

4.8, 10, 27.18; 55.2, 3, 9,

10.15; 620.35; 724.9

Seneca (the younger), L. A nnaeus

pp.5,20, 28, 41n.l63, 49, 51; 1
5.26, 27, 28, 7.5, 13,16.10; 2
2. 14-15. 4.14. 8.23; 312.11,

15.1, 2, 11-13 .14,16.15, 23.14,
25.16; 59.19,10.15,13.20,
22.11,12; 617.28, 24.12,14,

15. 16-17 . 25.3; 715. 14-15

Serapis/Serapides 120.22
Severus, correspondent of L. p.3
Sextus A el ius, see A el ius
Sheba 413.7

Sibyl(s) pp.5,16-21; 16.7-12,13,

14.15, 16, 7.13, 8.3,14.8,15.15;
210.4,11.18,12.19, 20, 16.1; 4
6.3, 5, 9,13.21, 15.9,15,18, 24,
25, 26, 27, 29,16.17, 17.4,

18.13.15, 17,19, 20, 19.5,10,
20.11; 513.21; 77.8,13.6,

15.18.16.11.13.18.5.6, 7,8,

19.2, 9, 20.1, 2, 3, 4, 23.4, 24.1,
2, 6, 24.12,13,14, 25.7

Sibylline books pp. 16-21, 51; 16.10-
11.13-14. 15-16 . 11.47; 24.29,
7.12, 8.48
SiccaVeneria p.l

Sicily/Sicilians 16.7, 21.13, 24, 22.25;

24.16, 27, 31, 33, 5.18
Sion 417.3
Sion, Mt 417.4
Sirach, see Ecclesiasticus
Silenus 121.25; 319.14

Sinnius Capita 620.35
Socrates pp.9, 23; 23.5, 8.49,14.9; 3
3.7, 4.2, 6.7, 7.10, 13.6,17.29,
19.17, 23, 24, 20.1, 9,12,15-17,
21.1,2,28.17,30.6; 514.14; 6
17.4; 72.10

Solomon 46.6, 8.13,15,12.3,13.24-
27,16.7,10,18.32
Solon 16.12
Sotio 624.14
Spain 121.8

Sparta/Spartans 120.29-32
Sparti 34.9

Speusippus, philosopher 16.12n
Stercutus 120.36
Stilicho p.17

Stoics pp.8, 9,11,14,18,19n.69, 27,
32; 12.2 and n, 3, 5.26, 6.2,12.3,
10,17.1; 25.7, 19, 28, 8.23, 48,
10.15,16; 34.1, 6.7, 7.8, 8.10,
12.12,18.1, 5,11, 23.14, 25.7,
27.4, 6; 65.4,14.7, 15.3,17.9,
11, 25n, 19.1; 73.1,11,13, 14,

4.2, 7.9, 13,20.8,23.3
Styx 111.12,19.3
Sulmo 510.5

Syria 410.14,18.4; 717.2, 26.2
Syrtes 517.18

Tarquinius Priscus, king of Rome 1
6.10-11; 27.8

Tarquinius Superbus, king of Rome
p. 17; 120.38; 45.7,14.11; 7
15.14

Tarquitius Priscus, Etruscan antiquarian
110.2

Tartarus 64.1; 720.3
Tatian pp.12,22

Tatius, Titus, king of Rome 120.11
Tauri, people of the Crimea 121.2
Tellus 122.28

Terence, P. Terenti us A fer p.19;

28.24; 34.7,18.13,26.4;
59.6,21.1; 72.3,27.3

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

471

Terminus 120.37-41
Tertullian, Septimius pp.l, 4,13, 22,
28, 31n, 46, 47; 51.23,4.3
Teucer 121.1

Thales of M iletus, philosopher 15.16;
29.18; 314.5,16.13, 20.17n; 4
10.18n

Thallus 113.8,23.2
Thebes 122.15; 312.22
Themis 111.10
Themiste 325.15

Theombrotus, philosopher 318.9,10
Theophilus of Antioch pp.12,22; 1
13.8n, 23.2, 5n; 714.8n, 25.5n
Theophrastus, philosopher 612.5
Thetis 111.9
Thoyth 16.3
Tiber 113.6, 21.6; 27.12
Tiberinus orThybris 111.59
TiberiusAtinius, see A ti nius
Tiberius, emperor 111.64n; 410.18,
14.11

Tiberius Gracchus 323.7n
Tibur 16.12
1 Timothy 412.17

Titan(s) 110.10,11.64,14.2-3, 7, 9,
10,21.39; 210.8; 56.7
Titus, emperor 421.5n
Tityus 721.5
Trajan, emperor p.46n,186
Tribonian p,13n.32
Trismegistus, see HermesTrismegistus
Triumph of Cupid 111.1
Troy/Trojans 13.17,6.9,12,9.10,
22.17,23.4; 216.18; 45.6,

8.13; 715.19
Tuditanus 323.7

Tullia, daughter of Cicero 115.16,
18.27; 328.9

Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome 1
20 . 11,12
Turullius 27.17
Tutinus 120.36
TwelveTables p.41; 69.6

Tyndarus 110.11,15.20

Ufens 510.5
Ulysses 123.3
Urania 115.8

Uranus 111.61,13.14,15,15.2, 22.28;
213.4

Valentinians (Christian sect) 430.10
L. Valerius 16.14

Varro, M . Terentius, antiquarian p.17;
16.7-12. 14,13.8,17.8, 21.7,
22.10-11; 212.4. 21-22 . 24; 4
15.27

Varro, P, Terentius A tacinus, poet 212.4
Varro, M . Terentius, surviving loser of
Cannae 216.16-17
Vatienus, P. 27.10
Veii, town 10 miles N. of Rome 2
7.11,16.11

Venus p.41; 110.4,15.9,17.9-11,
20.27,32; 24.12

Vergil, P. Vergilius M aro, poet pp.5, 6,
18,19-21,30,38-39,51; 1
5.11, 12,19, 8.8,10.9,14,11.6,
12, 20,13.9,12,13,15.12,

17.15.19.3, 20.38, 21.23n; 2
4.4, 8.2,10.16,16.17,18, 17.2;
38.27, 29.8; 410.7,15.21, 27.3,
28.15; 51.13, 5.5, 9,10, 12,

9.4.10.3, 5, 6, 8,11.5,19.9; 6
3.6 4.1, 24.10; 71.14,3.5,

20.10, U, 22.3, 7, 17, 24.11,12,
27.16

C. Verres, governor of Sicily 17.4n,
10.14; 24.27,30,31,33-37
Verrius, M , Flaccus, scholar 120.5
Vespasian, emperor 421.5
Vesta 111.46,12.4-6,14.2-4, 21.25,
27; 26.2; 320.4
Vestal Virgins 121.9,26
Victorinus pp.4-5
Virbius 117.15 and n
Virtus, Roman cult of 120.12,21.16

472

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Vulcan 112.7,15.9, 26,17.12-13,
18.21; 26.2; 44.8,27.18

Wisdom of Solomon 416. 7-10

Xenophanes of Colophon, philosopher
323.12

Zechariah/Zechariah 45.8,14.6^9, 11,
18.29

Zedekiah, king of Israel 45.7
Zeno of Citium, philosopher 15.20; 3
4.1, 2, 6.7, 7.8, 8.20, 22,18.5,
23.8; 49.2; 53.1; 77.11n, 13
Zeno of Sidon, philosopher 320.15; 6
24.14;

Zephyrus 120.8

Zeus (Zan, Zen) 111.16,46,13.11; 2
14.7

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